


Don't We All Deserve To Be Happy?

by three_cake_sandwich



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Canon-Typical Violence, Castiel & Eileen Leahy Friendship, Castiel is Jack Kline's Parent, Castiel/Dean Winchester First Kiss, Dean Winchester is Jack Kline's Parent, Domestic Castiel/Dean Winchester, Domestic Fluff, Eileen Leahy Deserves Better, Established Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, F/M, First Kiss, Fix-It, Fluff, Getting Together, Homophobic Language, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Humor, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Sex, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Married Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, No Smut, Post-Canon, Recreational Drug Use, Sam Winchester Ships Castiel/Dean Winchester, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, Slice of Life, Suicidal Dean Winchester, Swearing, Time Skips, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unplanned Pregnancy, canon divergent from 15x19, these tags make this fic sound really dark but i promise its not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:00:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28032012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/three_cake_sandwich/pseuds/three_cake_sandwich
Summary: “Maybe I can bring him back.”“You can what?” Dean couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Those words had starred in every dream of his that wasn’t a nightmare since Cas died.“If Chuck could get Lucifer out of The Empty, I should be able to get Cas out.”“Well, why haven’t you!”“I'm not sure how to. I woke Cas up in The Empty, before, but he got himself kicked out. And I was only a baby then. I don’t remember how I did it. This is more difficult. Let me focus.”***Post-canon fix-it, divergent from 15x19 where Jack stays and Dean doesn't die and Cas comes back and everyone is happy. Take a shot every time I'm salty about the finale. If you spot any errors, or want me to add any tags, let me know and I'll fix them. I'll add content warnings in the end notes of any chapters that contain them.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 25
Kudos: 185





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some dialogue from 15x19 and 15x20 in this chapter. Warnings in the end notes.

They’d done it. They’d actually done it. Defeated God Himself. Chuck was left scrabbling on the ground, powerless and pitiful. They could still hear his cries as they drove away, the wheels spinning on the loose gravel, but they didn’t even turn to look. 

They drove back to the town centre in silent shock, through the same deserted streets that had seemed eerie mere hours ago, but now seemed to anticipate, like they knew something big was coming. 

“Alright kid, you really think you can pull this off?”

The three of them had stepped out of the car. Sam and Dean looked down on Jack with hope in their expressions. 

Jack closed his eyes and smiled. It seemed to be no effort for him at all to bring seven billion people back. An elderly couple walked down the street discussing the weather as if they never left. A young girl on the other side kept running without even skipping a step. A shaggy gray dog bounded past. Jack opened his eyes to gaze upon his world in wonder. 

“So does this mean you’re the new… what do we call you?” Sam asked Jack, somewhat awed. 

Dean didn’t seem nearly as impressed. “Who cares what we call him. Look, all that matters is he got us back online.”

“Hey, what happened to Amara? When Chuck…?” Sam trailed off. 

“She’s with me. We’re in harmony. But I’m going to release her soon. She deserves freedom, like anyone else.”

“You gonna come back with us to the bunker?”

“What do you mean? Of course, he’s going to come back to the bunker.” Dean stared quizzically at his brother. 

“Of course. Why would I do anything else?”

“We should head off, then. It’s a long drive back to the bunker.” Sam started to make his way back to the car. 

“Give me one second.” Dean walked to the sidewalk where the dog he found earlier is sitting. He checked his neck for a collar but found nothing. 

“Hey!” He shouted at a man outside a nearby shop, “Do you know whose dog this is?”

“Nah, that mutt’s been running around for days.” The man's voice was gruff, with a heavy southern drawl. “Think it’s a stray. Keeps eating out my trash can.” He glared at the dog, as if warning it off. 

“Good,” Dean beamed. Upon seeing the man's expression, he backtracked, “I mean, bad. Bad dog. I’m uh, I’m gonna take him to the shelter.” He scratched the dog behind his ears. The dog was staring at him with an infatuated expression, his tongue lolling out. 

“Good riddance.” The man spat at the ground by his feet. 

Dean picked up Miracle, as he’d decided to call him, readjusting his grip around the dog a few times to accommodate his weight, and carried him back to Sam and Jack. 

“Really, Dean? You’re taking the dog?” Sam looked exasperated, but this was a common expression for Sam, so Dean ignored it. 

“He’s all alone out here. He needs someone. To look after him, I mean.”

The boys got back in the car, Jack letting Miracle get used to his scent in the back seat. They headed off back to the bunker. 

“So Jack,” Sam started after a few minutes of comfortable silence, “what do you want to do now you’re God?”

Jack put down Miracle’s paw, where he had been trying to teach him to shake. “I think I want to try being human.” He sighed. “My whole life so far has been dedicated to my angel side. Fighting my father, and my grandfather and trying to save the world. But I’m half human too. I’d like to experience things as humans do. Maybe see the world.” He paused for a moment. “I’d like to visit my mother. I can come and go between heaven and earth as I wish now. I think she’ll be proud of me.”

Sam nodded approvingly. “Of course she will. What kind of human things? How about... school?”

“Yeah, you should be old enough to start kindergarten soon,” Dean interjected, with a laugh. 

“There’s a place not far from the bunker that does night classes for the GED program.” Sam continued, ignoring Dean. 

“That sounds like fun. Then, maybe college? I’ve heard a lot about it from TV.”

“Oh yeah, lots of human experiences at college. When you’re older I’ll tell you what Sammy got up to with a watermelon at Stanford.”

“Shut up, Dean. Great plan, Jack.”

***

A few weeks had passed since they defeated Chuck, and Dean woke the same way he had every day since. He clambered out of bed, ignoring his headache and the dry feeling in his mouth, picked up the several empty beer bottles from the night before, and walked towards the voices he could hear in the distance, throwing the bottles in the trash on the way. Jack and Sam were at the map table, both on their laptops. Jack was frowning at his. 

“Hey, kid. How’re those applications coming along?” Dean asked, in a way he hoped didn’t sound forced, but by the look on Sam’s face, he didn’t succeed. 

“I’ve nearly finished filling out this form,” Jack replied, oblivious. “It’s taking forever. Do you know what my social security number is?”

It was too soon after he’d woken up for such questions. “Uh, we’ll worry about that some other time. We’ve got something more important to do.”

*

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“Oh, I don’t have a choice. This is my destiny. It’s just so damn beautiful.”

“It’s just a pie festival, Dean.”

They had driven for hours to get to this small town in the middle of nowhere. How Dean had heard about it, Sam had no idea. Normally, he wouldn’t indulge his brother, but it was the first time he’d seen a shred of happiness on Dean’s face since Cas had died, so he couldn’t deny him. 

“You shut your face. This is the food of the Gods.”

Jack frowned. “I didn’t make these.”

“That’s not–” Dean shook his head. “Never mind. I’m gonna go get some–” he gestured vaguely at the food stall. 

“Pie?” Sam finished. 

“Get some damn pie.”

Sam and Jack sat down on a small bench while Dean went to get the pie. Dean returned with a whole tray of pies, shooting daggers at a man who nearly bumped in to him. Sam frowned at him. 

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I’m fine.”

“Nah, come on, I know that face. That’s sad Sam face.”

“I’m not sad Sam. I’m just thinking about Cas, y’know. If he could be here.” Sam had been wanting to broach the topic with Dean for a while, but it had never seemed like the right time. 

“Yeah, I know, I think about him too. You know what? That pain’s not going to go away. Right?” Dean evaded. “But if we don’t keep living, then his sacrifice is going to be for nothing. So quit being a fricking Eeyore, huh?”

Dean handed Sam and Jack a slice of pie each, and silently ended the conversation. 

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Sam took his slice of pie and splatted it into Dean’s face. Sam couldn’t stop himself from laughing at Dean's unamused expression. The slice of pie slowly fell off and landed back on the plate with a small thud.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a very long time.” There was absolutely no regret in Sam’s voice. 

Jack watched the scene with amusement. He studied his own piece for a moment before pie-ing Dean too. 

Sam laughed again, even harder this time.

“That is fun!” Jack says gleefully. 

Dean scraped the whipped cream off his face. “I’m taking these away from you. You don’t deserve them.”

He walked away muttering, “I’m so sorry, my babies. I won’t let them hurt you again.”

Sam and Jack continued to laugh for a moment, alone on the bench until Jack suddenly went somber. 

“I miss him, too. Cas, I mean. Every day. Dean didn’t seem that upset.”

“Oh, he is. I know how he gets when he’s upset. I recognize the signs. He’s just putting on a brave face.”

“There’s one thing I don’t get though. Cas’s deal with The Empty. It would only come to take him when he was truly happy.”

“Really?” Sam asked. Dean hadn’t mentioned that in his incredibly brief rundown of how Cas had died. 

“Yeah. But what could have happened to cause that? Cas and Dean were all alone in the bunker being chased by Death. What could they have done together make Cas so happy?”

Sam had an idea, but maybe now wasn’t the time to mention it. “Uh, I guess we’ll never know.” 

*

Dean had caught wind of a case, where the parents got murdered and the children were kidnapped. It seemed familiar, so he dug out dad's journal from where it was stashed under a box of guns, unused for years. After it confirmed his suspicions, they headed to the vamp nest in a barn on the outskirts of town,

They found the terrified kids inside and Sam helped them out to the car so they didn’t get lost. Dean and Jack tackled the vamps in his absence. Dean sliced the head off of one, Jack got to use his new God powers to smite another. One vampire got chatty with Dean, started taunting him, and said she’d been waiting years to get her payback. Dean didn’t recognize her, because who recognizes someone they met once fifteen years ago. She didn’t have time to be annoyed before Jack smited her from behind. 

One vampire caught Dean off guard and managed to shove him into a wall. Dean felt a blinding pain in his back and blood started to pour out of him. He knew this was serious, but despite the pain, he felt calm. He knew it was his time, and he was ready. 

Jack picked Dean’s discarded machete and took a confident swing at the vampire, removing his head in an instant. “I think your way is more fun. You ready to go, Dean? _Dean!_ ”

Jack had finally noticed the flush fading from Dean’s cheeks, his breathing getting harsher. He rushed to Dean’s side and checked his wound. His hand came back covered in blood. 

“Just leave me, Jack. This is it for me.”

“No, let me–” Jack raised his hand to Dean’s forehead. Dean swatted him away. 

“Don’t bother saving me. I want to die.” His words were starting to slur together but he persisted. “I deserve this.”

“What do you mean? Of course, you don’t.”

“Cas died because he said he loved me. He’s an angel. A warrior of God!” Dean scoffed humorlessly. “He has commanded armies, seen the creation of the earth, watched over humanity for millennia, and he chose to die for me. _Me_. A worthless, piece of crap hunter, good for nothing but slicing and dicing. No.” He shook his head firmly. “This is how I was always meant to die. Doing the family business.” He looked into Jack’s eyes, imploring him. 

Jack looked back at him with pity. “Maybe that was true once, but not anymore. Your life has evolved so much past random vampire hunts. You have defeated The Devil and God Himself. You’re Dean Winchester, The Righteous Man.”

Dean looked away from him. He couldn’t listen to this. He didn’t deserve this kindness. Cas was wrong. He was just a blunt instrument, ready to be tossed aside when you were done with it. “Please, kid. Tell Sammy I–”

“Look at me, Dean. Cas died so you could live. Don’t waste his sacrifice like this.”

Jack ignored Dean’s protests and pulled him from the nail. Dean cried out in pain, but his screams were cut short by the familiar feeling of grace flowing through his body. 

Dean sank to the floor, the phantom ache of the rebar still present. “You should have let me die. I can’t live without Cas anymore.” A single tear rolled down his cheek. 

Jack paused for a moment. “Maybe I can bring him back.”

“You can what?” Dean couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Those words had starred in every dream of his that wasn’t a nightmare since Cas died. 

“If Chuck could get Lucifer out of The Empty, I should be able to get Cas out.”

“Well, why haven’t you!”

“I'm not sure how to. I woke Cas up in The Empty, before, but he got himself kicked out. And I was only a baby then. I don’t remember how I did it. This is more difficult. Let me focus.”

Jack walked into the middle of the room, his arms by his sides with his palms facing forwards, and closed his eyes. His face was expressionless for a minute then he lightly furrowed his brow. One of the lightbulbs above Jack's head burst, though he didn't seem to notice, he just clenched his hands into fists. Dean didn't have a great view of him from the back of the barn, but it seemed his lips were moving, like he was talking to someone Dean couldn't see. Two more lightbulbs burst with loud bangs. Jack's eyes were open now, but were focused off into the distance. He was shouting, screaming, but no sounds were coming from his mouth. The final bulb shattered with a shower of sparks that fell to the ground and smoldered in the hay. He reached forward, grabbed something invisible from the air and pulled with all his strength.

Cas appeared at the door to the barn. He looked around in confusion at the decapitated bodies on the floor and as to how he got there. His eyes eventually met Jack’s and he started to walk forwards, the sparks still raining down on him. Jack ran forward and hugged him, burying his face in Cas’s shoulder. “I did it! I wasn’t sure if I could, but I could! I brought you back, Cas!”

Dean walked further into the room and Cas locked eyes with him over Jack's shoulder. The pained expression on Cas’s face made him stop still, as if all his limbs had suddenly frozen. 

The sound of footsteps coming towards them made them all turn, Cas looking away first. 

“Cas? What? How?” Sam had entered the barn, his own machete raised, but he lowered it upon seeing Cas through the darkness. 

“I brought him back!” Jack beamed. 

Sam brought Cas into a friendly hug, careful not to cut his coat with the knife. He patted him twice on the back and pulled back. “It’s great to have you back, buddy. Right, Dean?”

Sam turned to look at Dean, who still hadn’t moved, on the other side of the barn. “Uh, yeah. Great. We’d better, uh, get those kids home.”

Dean walked out of the barn without looking at Cas and went straight to his car. 

They all squished into the Impala. There wasn’t room for six people so the youngest boy had to sit on Jack’s lap in the back seat. They drove in silence back to the boys’ house, the tension in the air thick. Jack didn’t stop smiling the whole way there. They dropped the boys a few streets away and immediately drove away before anyone could ask any questions.

Sam started making small talk with Cas, now the boys were gone, welcoming him back, but Dean couldn’t focus on anything they were saying. He kept looking back in the rear-view mirror. Occasionally, their eyes would lock and he’d quickly look away.

A few miles out from the bunker, Dean pulled into a grocery store parking lot. 

“Why are we stopping?”

“We need beer. And burgers. Kid, come with me. You two stay here.”

Sam looked a bit confused but let it go. He went back to talking to Cas, but he wasn’t listening. He watched out the window as Dean walked away. 

Jack followed Dean inside. “What are we doing?”

“Told you. Getting burgers. Grab some of those,” Dean pointed at some nearby tomatoes. 

Jack did as he was told, “I mean, why did you tell Cas and Sam to stay in the car?”

“Because I need to talk to you.” Dean grabbed a head of lettuce and pretended to examine it to avoid making eye contact. “I just wanted to say, y’know. Thank you. Not just for Cas, but everything. Bringing everyone back, saving the whole world.” He gestured at the other customers in the shop. “These people all owe you their lives and they don’t even know.”

Dean moved to the meat aisle and started to look for the right amount of mince. “And I’m sorry. For all the times I doubted you. When I thought you were evil just because of who your father was. When I blamed you for my mom's death.” He put the beef in his basket and finally looked at the nephilim. “You’re our kid, Jack. You’re family. And I’m so damn proud of you.”

Jack smiled back at Dean. He wanted to say something, but he could tell Dean wasn’t done. 

“You’re right about being human. I think a nice normal human life sounds great right about now.” Dean was smiling to himself as he walked towards the bread section. 

“You mean, give up hunting?”

“Yeah. I mean it. I’ve got something worth living for now. Can’t go dying on any run of the mill hunts again.”

They got the last few ingredients, paid for them, and got back into the car. Dean hummed along to the music on the radio the rest of the way home. As soon as they got back, he ran off to the kitchen to start cooking, Miracle chasing after him. The faint sounds of Led Zeppelin could just be heard from the map room. 

Cas stared after them. “You got a dog?”

“Dean’s idea.” Sam sat at the table and looked at Cas, smirking. “So, Cas. Jack told me about your deal. With The Empty. How you had to experience true happiness for it to take you. And we were wondering… what happened?” Sam failed to keep the teasing tone from his voice. 

Cas rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh, uh. It was nothing.”

“Nothing, huh?” Sam was really struggling to keep from smiling now. “Nothing happened while you and Dean were all alone? Together?”

“Yep. That’s right. Absolutely nothing happened.”

“And doing nothing, that’s your idea of true happiness?” Sam winked at Jack but Jack didn’t seem to be following. 

Cas stammered and couldn’t come up with a good answer. The conversation died down until the mouth-watering smell of burgers reached the room, shortly followed by Dean. He had four plates balanced up his arms, and a grin plastered across his face. 

“Alright! Burgers for everyone! One for Cas, one for Jack, no pickles.” He set the plates down in front of each of them in turn, ruffling Jack’s hair as he walked past, then went to the other side of the table. “And one veggie burger with actual veggie bacon for Sam.”

“Wait, seriously?” Sam took the top bun off his burger and grabbed the bacon off the top and gave it a sniff. With a doubtful glance at Dean, he took a small bite. “Woah, that actually is veggie bacon.”

“You win, alright? You can have your damn rabbit food. But,” he said, as he put his own plate on the table and sat down, “the meat man needs his meat. Double patty, double bacon, double cheese.” He tasted a bite and moaned. “Perfection,” he said around a mouthful of burger. 

The others took bites of their burgers. They all agreed they were delicious. They chatted pleasantly and drank beer for the rest of the evening. Dean managed to avoid addressing any of his comments directly as Cas and Cas did the same. Just hearing his voice was almost too much for Dean. 

Eventually, it grew late, so Sam and Dean headed to their rooms to get ready for bed. Jack also retired to his room, but he had no need to sleep. He liked to pretend, though. He found it made everyone else more comfortable if he didn’t act too unusual.

Dean was in his room in pajamas. Cas knocked on the door.

“Hello, Dean. We need to talk.”

“I knew you’d say that. Thought you’d take longer to come see me, though. Sit,” he patted the bed next to him.

Cas sat on the bed. His face screwed up as he tried to find the right words.

“I don’t want things to be uncomfortable between us. I only said it because I thought I would never see you again. This,” he gestured between them, “was not part of the plan. But-" he took a deep breath, "-I meant everything I said and I don’t regret it. I understand you don’t feel the same way and I made my peace with that a long time ago. I would like it if we’d be able to remain friends.” This was very different from Cas’s last goodbye speech. He couldn't make eye contact with Dean; he addressed his whole speech at his hands. He spoke with false apathy, as though he was struggling to stop himself from unleashing his true emotions

Dean's heart broke to see him so miserable. He took his hand, “Cas. I’m not uncomfortable.”

Cas's head snapped up. “Of course you are. You barely said a word to me at dinner. I kept catching you looking at me out the corner of your eye and you looked disgusted.” Cas’s voice choked up on that last word. 

“No, no, no, Cas.” Dean squeezed his hand tighter. “I didn’t talk to you because I couldn’t say anything in front of Sam. How am I supposed to just have a regular conversation with you after a confession like that?” He laughed. “I was staring at you because I was worried if I looked away for a second you’d disappear on me again. And I wasn’t disgusted. I was embarrassed you’d caught me staring.”

“Oh.” Cas's expression softened.

“If the last few weeks have taught me anything, it’s that I can’t be without you. I need you, Cas.”

Cas stared intently into Dean's eyes. Dean took his hand that wasn't holding Cas’s and cupped his jaw. 

“Will you stay with me tonight? Sleep next to me?”

“I don’t sleep.” Cas tilted his head to the side. 

“Watch over me, then. I know you love doing that.”

He considered it for a moment. “Okay. I’d like that.”

Cas didn’t move and waited for Dean to get into bed. 

“You just gonna sit there, man?”

Cas tilted his head again. “You just asked me to watch over you.”

“Yeah, but, I meant, you know, in the bed with me.” Dean pulled back the duvet covers a few inches. 

“Oh,”

“Is that okay?”

Cas nodded, speechless, his breathing heavy. 

“Come on, let’s get you comfy.” 

Dean pushed Cas’s trench coat off his shoulders and placed it on the chair next to his bed. Then he did the same with his suit jacket. Cas didn’t break eye contact with him the whole time. 

“Take your shoes off.”

Cas toed off his shoes and kicked them to one side. Dean loosened his tie and threw it onto the chair with the rest of Cas’s clothes. He undid one extra button on his shirt. 

“Get in, then," he said after a few seconds, when Cas just stood there. 

Cas climbed into the bed and lay on his back. Dean turned off the lights and blindly felt his way into the bed. He put one arm around Cas’s waist before looking down at him in the darkness.

“This okay?”

He could just about make out Cas nodding, so he settled his head on Cas’s chest, and curled into his side. Cas tentatively placed one hand on Dean's hip and the other in his hair. 

“Don’t you dare tell Sammy I’m a cuddler.”

Cas chuckled softly and stroked Dean's hair until he fell asleep. 

*

Dean woke slowly the following morning. He cracked open one eye just far enough to check his alarm clock. He had slept for ten straight hours. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept that long. He startled briefly when his bed seemed to shift under him before he realized he was still laying on top of Cas.

“Morning, Cas,” Dean said, groggily, closing his eyes again, “d’you want coffee?”

“Uh, sure,”

“Good, then go get some. Bring me back a cup, too.” Dean rolled off of Cas’s stomach and onto his back. 

Cas smiled fondly at Dean’s grumpy morning attitude. He walked to the kitchen, barefoot, not bothering to redress properly. Jack was already there, wearing the same clothes as yesterday. Sam walked in a moment after Cas did. He was sweaty and flushed, wearing his jogging clothes. He looked Cas up and down and raised an eyebrow at his appearance. Jack missed the whole exchange and kept eating his cereal. 

Cas bid good morning to the two men and turned the coffee machine to start brewing enough for four cups. He knew all of their orders by heart: Lots of milk and sugar for Jack. A splash of oat milk for Sam. Black for Dean. Black with one sugar for himself. Even though everything still tasted like molecules to him, sugar molecules tasted better. Cas gave the others their coffee and said goodbye, then picked up the two remaining cups and started to head out of the room, but Sam’s voice stopped him. 

“Hey, Cas?”

“Yes?”

“Uh, where’s Dean?” There was a strange twinkle in Sam’s eyes, as if he was making a joke, but Cas had no idea what it was. 

“He’s still in bed.”

“Really? He doesn’t normally sleep this long.”

“I imagine he is still very tired after last night.”

“Is he now?” Sam made a pointed look at Jack, but he didn’t seem to be following. Sam rolled his eyes. 

Cas walked back to Dean’s room. Miracle was waiting outside the door, whining and scratching, trying to get in. Cas opened the door and Miracle ran inside, jumping on the bed. Dean was sitting up now but still looked half asleep. He hugged the dog tightly around the middle and muttered into his fur, “I’m sorry I didn’t let you in last night, buddy. I had someone else in my bed.” He kissed the dog a few more times on the top of his head and pushed him off the bed. “Walk later, okay? Coffee first.”

He turned to Cas and made grabby hands at the coffee. Cas brought it over to him and handed him the correct cup. Dean took a long sip. 

“That’s good stuff.”

Dean pointed with his head for Cas to get back into the bed, which he did, being careful not to spill any of the coffee. They sat up in bed and drank in companionable silence until the caffeine had reached Dean’s bloodstream and he was feeling slightly more human. 

He stretched and groaned a little as he stood up and made his way to his dresser. Cas wondered if he should leave or at least turn around when he realized what he was about to do, but Dean made no indication he was uncomfortable with Cas being there. Still, Cas did his best to avert his gaze, but he couldn't help himself from catching a glimpse of Dean shirtless. 

Cas put down his own now empty cup on the nightstand and started to put his own clothes back on to distract himself from Dean. He put back on his jacket and ill-fitting trench coat and tightened his tie around his neck. He and Dean both finished dressing at around the same time, and Dean walked around to the other side of the bed. 

“Do you want to come with me to walk Miracle?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Miracle, buddy,” Dean turned to the dog, “walkies.”

Miracle shot from the room and headed to the front door where he knew the leads were kept. 

“You ready to go?” Dean looked down at Cas’s feet to check he had his shoes on. 

“Yes. I’m ready.”

Dean gave Cas one last look-over. He frowned lightly.

“What?” Cas sounded confused.

He reached up and loosened Cas’s tie an inch or two. “There. Now you’re ready. Let’s go.”

He took his hand and led him from the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Use of alcohol as a coping mechanism, suicidal ideation, both brief.


	2. Chapter 2

The next few weeks seemed to fly by. Sam filled Eileen in on what went down with Chuck and told her she was out of danger. She had been absolutely terrified, standing at the side of the road, waiting for Sam to turn up, but not telling her what was happening. 

Sam didn’t spend much time in the bunker anymore. He was always out on dates with Eileen, doing, in Dean’s words, ‘new wave hippie shit’, like yoga and jogging. Miracle didn’t seem to mind all the walks he got to go on, though. When he was home, Eileen was almost always with him. Dean found her in the kitchen one morning wearing one of Sam’s shirts like a dress, making pancakes. He couldn’t resist making a whole bunch of innuendos. Eileen just chucked a load back at him. He was really starting to like her. 

Dean had a lot of free time on his hands now he wasn’t hunting, so he made Cas watch all of his favorite cowboy movies. Cas, in turn, made Dean watch the How To Train Your Dragon series. Dean would never admit it, but he definitely preferred the latter. That dragon was adorable, okay? They watched all of their movies together on the sofa in the Dean Cave. Sometimes Cas leaned his head on Dean’s shoulder, other times Dean had his feet in Cas’s lap, but they were always touching in some way. 

Dean returned home on a rare day that Eileen wasn’t there with a parcel he'd picked up from their PO Box. 

“Look what’s finally arrived!” He set it down on the map table where everyone was gathered. 

“Uh, the latest addition to your antique doll collection?” Sam teased. 

“You’re the one with the doll collection,” came Dean’s epic retort. “Remember what Jack said a few weeks ago about not having a social security number?”

“Yeah?”

“It got me thinking. If we’re going to attempt a normal life we’re going to need to be legit. You and I have been legally dead for years, Jack is technically three years old, and Cas is in the body of a ten-year-old missing persons case. So,” he started to open the box, “I reached out to Charlie to see if she knew anyone who could make fake IDs.”

“We make fake IDs all the time.”

“Yeah, but these are real fake IDs. Charlie put me onto her friend, Benji, or at least, that’s what his name is at the moment, and he set me up with all of these. He did the same for everyone from Apocalypse World so they could exist in _this_ world. These will stand up to any test and appear on any database, guaranteed, or he’ll pay our bail funds himself. He and Charlie also hacked all police and FBI records for us so when we use these it won’t alert the authorities. Even though we’re technically dead, our names would probably flag up an alert so they had to erase all of those. Took a while. We have a _lot_ of warrants out for our arrest under our various aliases, and videos from CCTV of us killing a bunch of people. We should have really been more careful. Whoops.” He pulled his face into a fake grimace. “Hey, did you know we were still on the secret service’s most wanted list for attempting to assassinate the president?”

“No,” Sam racked his brain, “when did we do that?”

“When he was being possessed by Lucifer. Before Jack was born. I’d completely forgotten that, too. How batshit are our lives that something like that is a minor blip? Charlie was very impressed by that one, less impressed by the amount of grave desecration we’ve done. Sorted out Eileen, too. She was easy, just had to erase the one death record. _She_ knows how to fly under the radar. Here,”

He pulled out three envelopes, each with a name on the front, and handed them to the respective person, and kept one for himself. “Passports, driver's licenses, birth certificates, social security numbers, college degrees, et cetera. I had to change a few things so it wasn’t immediately obvious we’re the same people.”

Sam was first to open his envelope. “Samuel Tristan Winchester. Why did you give me a middle name?”

“I had to come up with something.” 

He grabbed Dean’s envelope out of his hands. “Alright, Dean _Ross_ Winchester. These are the dumbest middle names.” Sam gave Dean a look of disdain. “This says you’re two years younger than you are.”

“Damn right. I’m thirty-nine forever.” Dean puffed his chest out proudly. 

“You sound like a PTA mom.”

“You can throw me a proper fortieth birthday party this time. Can’t believe you forgot last year.”

Sam rolled his eyes, “For the last time, I didn’t forget. You were possessed by Michael!”

“I still want a party. Stop your whining. I made you younger, too.”

Sam checked his birth certificate again, “By one day!”

Jack was next to open his. “This says I’m nineteen. Do I look nineteen?”

“Dunno,” Dean examined his face, “maybe a bit older? But you’ll do.”

“Should I make myself look younger?”

“Can you do that?”

“Yes. I became fully grown moments after my birth. I’ve always been able to control my aging.”

Jack snapped his fingers. It wasn’t immediately obvious anything had happened, but if Dean looked closely, he could see the slightest difference in Jack’s face. His jawline was a bit softer and his cheeks were fuller.

“Cool.” Jack usually acted so human, it was easy to forget he was literally the most powerful being on the planet. Dean would never not be in awe every time he used his powers. “So, by the time you’ve finished your GED and go off to college you’ll be old enough to drink but not much older than the other college kids.”

He rifled through the rest of his envelope. “You didn’t get me a driver’s license.”

“Nope, you can learn to drive the normal way. You wanted human experiences, didn’t you?”

“Yeah! Are you going to teach me?”

“You hurt my Baby, and God or not, I will kill you.”

His smile didn’t falter. He knew Dean wasn’t being serious, and even if he was, there was no way he’d succeed. He checked his birth certificate. 

“Parents Kelly Kline and Casper Kline. What did you get, Cas?”

Cas looked pensively at his new driver’s license, his expression unreadable. 

“Casper Kline, of Illinois, born September 18, 1976.”

“Casper?” Sam asked, looking up from where he was trying to memorize his new social security number.

“Well, I couldn’t put Castiel,” Dean defended. He hoped Cas wouldn’t mind the new name too much. “Sounds way too biblical. People would think he was some cult dude with twelve wives or some shit. Casper seemed human enough, and you can still go by Cas.”

“You made Cas Jack’s dad?”

“Well, yeah. He kind of is anyway. Besides, they look identical.” His head flicked between the two of them. “It was the obvious option.”

Cas and Jack looked at each other. They frowned in sync. 

“I don’t see it,”

“Me neither,”

“Seriously, guys? It’s like a mirror!”

They both tilted their heads to the side.

“Still don’t see it.”

*

Later that evening, after everyone was done learning their new cover stories, Dean and Cas were alone on their usual spot on the sofa. Sam had taken Miracle out for a walk and was video-calling Eileen to tell her the news that she officially existed again, and Jack was still at the map table, filling out the last piece of information on his application. 

Dean was about to put on their film, a cheesy, early two-thousands romcom that Dean was pretending he hadn’t seen before, when Cas spoke up. 

“That was a nice thing you did. It must have taken you a while.”

Dean sat on the sofa and put the remote to one side. “Yeah, well. I’m tired of looking over my shoulder. Living outside the law. Constantly scamming credit cards and hustling pool for money. That’s been my life for so long now and I want out. I want to get a normal job and worry about normal people things like paying the gas bill and quarterly reports, not worrying if the FBI has finally tracked me down.”

“What’s a quarterly report?”

“No idea. Can’t wait to find out.” Dean leaned backwards and let his arm fall over Cas’s shoulders. Cas instinctively snuggled closer and looked up at him. 

“Are you sure about this? You’d be giving up the only life you’ve ever known.”

“Absolutely. You?”

“I’ll be happy to live any life with you in it, Dean.” Cas lightly traced his fingers across Dean's chest. “But I must admit, a life with no demons, no angels, no witches, no deal with The Empty hanging over my head. It sounds… nice.”

“You and me against the world, then, huh?” Dean lightly tapped the top of Cas’s head with his own. 

“You and me.” He smiled, then paused. He seemed hesitant about what he was going to say next. “We are a ‘you and me’, then? We’re an… ‘us’?”

Dean chuckled. “Yeah, Cas. We’re an ‘us’.”

He leaned forward and placed a lingering kiss on his cheek. When he pulled back, Cas was staring intensely into his eyes. Cas put his hand on the back of Dean's neck and pulled him closer so their lips met. 

Their mouths fit together so perfectly it felt like they’d been designed just for this. Dean didn’t know why he’d expected Cas to be shy about this; he’d seen Cas kiss before and the guy was _good_. Cas took Dean’s lower lip between his, then the top, then Dean felt a tiny poke of tongue that at first he thought was an accident, but a second, broader stroke told him that was not the case. He opened his mouth wider to permit Cas entry, and clutched his fingers into Cas’s shirtfront, leaving crinkles in it for all to see. 

Even though the last thing he wanted to do was pull away, he did need to breathe. He placed a small kiss on the side of his mouth, then his cheek, temple, and finally his forehead.

Cas had practically melted into a pile of goo in his arms, so he cuddled him into his chest, and stroked the small hairs at the nape of his neck.

“So how ‘bout that movie then?” Dean reached for the remote, careful not to jostle Cas and pressed play.

Cas lasted less than five minutes before he turned the TV off and started kissing him again.

***

Over the next few months, Dean and Cas spent nearly every available moment wrapped in each other's arms. They would steal kisses in doorways, on couches, behind the bookshelves, but always when they were alone, breaking apart the second they heard someone else enter the room. 

Sam continued to go out with Eileen a lot, perhaps even more than before. One day he came back grinning from ear to ear and went straight to his room. Eileen seemed to come over to the bunker less after that. When Dean asked him what was going on, he evasively said he had been invited to a job interview. 

Jack had successfully applied to the GED program, thanks to his false high school records that Dean had made, and now spent the majority of his time working on his homework. Unfortunately, as he had never actually been to school, there were some large gaps in his knowledge. 

“I’m a high school drop-out. How am I supposed to know this?” Dean said one day after Jack had called him over for help. “Hey, college drop-out,” he called to Sam as he entered the room with a large bowl of salad and a beer, “you come do this.” 

Sam put his food down on the table and looked over Jack’s shoulder at his work. His face of confusion matched Dean’s. 

“Right? How can they change math, Sammy? _Math_ is _math_. One plus one is two, that’s all you need to know. What the hell is this shit? Python gore?”

“Pretty sure they had Pythagoras when we were in school, Dean.”

“Nah, this is some millennial math. Sorry kid,” he clapped Jack over the shoulder, “you’re going to have to work that one out on your own.” 

He picked up the beer, ignoring Sam’s protests, and left the room. 

“Don’t worry, Jack,” he said, after he was done shooting daggers at Dean’s back, “we’ll figure this out.”

He looked over the problem again. “Maybe we’ll watch a YouTube tutorial first.”

***

It was Sam’s turn to choose for movie night, and he’d chosen a true crime documentary that Dean instantly decided was insufferably boring so he spent the whole time looking at Cas instead. They sat slightly further apart on the sofa than they usually would if Sam wasn’t in the room, but still close enough for their little fingers to brush together.

Around halfway through the movie, Cas’s phone lit up with a message, and he took his hand back from Dean so he could check it.

“Jack’s having trouble with the math again. I’ll go help him. Don’t bother pausing it.”

He stood to leave, and lightly stroked Dean’s cheek as he left. Dean smiled back at him. 

“Don’t be long,”

Cas shut the door behind himself. A second later, Sam picked up the remote and turned off the TV. 

“He said not to pause it!”

Sam looked at his brother incredulously. “Okay, that’s it. I’ve had enough.”

“What about?” Dean had no idea which one of his recent behaviors had annoyed him this time. 

“Are you ever going to tell me about you two?”

“What about us?”

“That you’re fucking? Do you think I’m blind? You’re not even trying to hide it. I’ve known for weeks. You two give each other those damn sex eyes even more than normal now. I’ve been waiting for you to tell me when you were ready, but it’s taking too freaking long.” 

Sam’s voice had gotten very loud as he finally let out weeks worth of exasperation. He took a breath and lowered the volume to a regular level. “Look, I’m happy for you guys, okay? You don’t have to hide it from me.” 

Dean looked away from him. “We’re not fucking.”

“Seriously, Dean? You’re going to deny it?” Sam couldn’t believe him. He’s just seen them holding hands! How this man ever convinced anyone he was an FBI agent when he was this bad a liar, Sam would never know.

“We’re not! I mean, yeah, we’re _together_ but we haven’t, y’know…” Dean made a crude gesture with his fingers. 

“You expect me to believe that Dean Winchester, man whore, who can pick someone up at a bar and be back at their place in under an hour, is what? Waiting till marriage?” He threw his hands in the air. 

“Okay, first of all? Rude. Second,” he paused, and ran his hands down his face, “it’s just, you know…”

“Is it because he’s an angel?” Sam prompted when Dean didn’t continue.

“No.”

“Because he’s a dude?”

“No!”

“Then why?”

“Because he’s… whatever he is. Dude was a forty million year old virgin when we first met, and the only time he’s had sex since then was when he was tricked by that reaper bitch. He was human and homeless and vulnerable and she only slept with him so she could kill him. And he’s shown no sign of wanting to have sex since becoming an angel again. Not that I blame him; wasn’t exactly a great first time experience. Remember when I tried to set him up with that waitress? He just sat there, didn’t even say anything. I was doing all the hard work! I think he sniffed her, Sammy! Who does that? He’s clearly not interested. Can’t believe I’m admitting this, but I haven’t had sex in years and weirdly, it doesn’t bother me. If Cas doesn’t want to have sex, then I’m okay with that.”

Dean ended his big speech looking at Sam, expecting congratulations for his improved behavior and acceptance, but was just met with Sam, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, staring back at him. 

“Dean. You are. A complete. Dumbass.” Sam punctuated each word with a thwack from a nearby pillow. 

“Wait, what?” Dean said, as he raised his hands to defend against the attack. 

“The guy looks three seconds from ripping your clothes off. It’s getting insufferable being in the same room as you two now, because I’m worried he’s going to jump you at any given moment. He wasn’t into the waitress because he’s clearly into _you_. Anyone with eyes can see that. Don’t you remember all those angels and demons that used to call him your boyfriend? They all knew!”

Dean floundered. “Nah, that’s just how he looks at people. Dude’s got a really intense stare.”

“No,” Sam said slowly, like he was explaining to a child, “that’s how he looks at _you_ specifically. Cas never gives me, or anyone else, bedroom eyes. Have you even talked to him about this?”

“Ye– uh, n-no.”

“Well maybe you should. Before Jack starts asking me any more awkward questions.”

Dean looked up in shock. 

“Yeah, even he’s finally noticed,” Sam grimaced. 

Dean heard the sound of the TV turning back on and the volume increasing to max as he left the room. He headed to Jack’s room, clenching his hands into fists and releasing them over and over. He knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for a response. 

Jack and Cas both looked up from where they were sitting on the bed, hunched over the textbook. “It’s okay, Dean, I’ve got it now. Cas knew what the quadratic formula was.”

“That’s great, kid, but I, uh, I needed to talk to Cas a second.”

Dean took Cas out of the door, then down a few more twists of the bunker’s identical hallways until they were out of Jack’s celestial earshot.

“Look, can we talk?”

Cas’s face, which had up until now been looking very confused, softened. “Of course, Dean. You can always talk to me. About anything. Communication is very important in relationships.” Cas placed his hand on Dean’s arm.

“Have you been reading marriage counselling books?” Dean was so surprised, he briefly forgot the real reason he brought Cas here. 

“Well, I’ve never done this before. I didn’t want to make any mistakes.”

Dammit, how was he supposed to get his words out with Cas staring at him like that? He wasn’t even doing anything, and Dean was already flustered. And his _voice._ God, he was just sex on legs. How had it ever taken him twelve years to realize he was into Cas? But, speaking of sex…

“That’s, uh, real nice, buddy. A+ for effort. But, uh, the relationship is, uh, what I wanted to talk about. 

“What about it?” Cas seemed slightly alarmed by his sudden stammering. 

“Nothing bad, don’t worry.” He said, quickly, upon seeing Cas’s startled expression. “It’s about… sex.”

Dean took Cas’s other hand in his and played with his fingers. He kept his gaze on Cas’s lips, not quite able to look him in the eyes. 

“Sex… between you and me?”

Cas removed his hand from Dean’s arm and used it to tilt his chin up so they were eye to eye, their faces mere inches from each other. 

“Yeah, um, that kind of sex. Uh, why haven’t we…?” Dean let eyebrows finish the rest of the sentence. 

“Oh,” Cas took a small step out of his personal space, “I didn’t want to rush you.”

Dean frowned. Of all the answers he’d expected, that was not one of them. “ _You_ , rush _me_?”

“Well,” he took another step back so he was nearly touching the opposite wall, “I know you’ve only ever been attracted to women before so I thought you’d be hesitant about sex with a man, or, at least, an angel in a male vessel, and I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable or pressure you into something you weren’t ready for.”

Dean froze. “Oh my god. We’re both dumbasses,” he whispered to himself. Sam was right. Damn him. “Wait. Is that why you moved your hands the other day?”

“What?”

“When I kissed you in the kitchen that day we made French toast, you just left your hands by your sides, so I put them on my ass for you. Then you moved them up to my waist.”

“I thought that was an accident.”

Fuck. “I thought you weren’t interested in things getting more X-rated.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I’ve been dropping hints for ages and you’ve done nothing! I stopped wearing a shirt to bed!”

He at least had the decency to look sheepish. “It has been getting warmer recently.”

“Every time I’ve woken up and you’re spooning me, I’ve rubbed my ass against your crotch and you’ve never got hard!” Dean just about resisted the urge to throw his hands up in exasperation. 

“Oh. I thought you were still asleep. It took every ounce of my grace to will the erection away.”

“Jesus Christ.” Dean lightly punched the wall next to his head, then whispered, “Maybe communication is important.”

He spun back round and took a step closer to Cas. “I want to have sex with you.”

“Oh”

Dean took another step. 

“I’m ready to have sex with you.”

Cas had started to breathe heavily, as he let Dean push him the last step needed for his back to be flush against the hallway wall.

Dean put his hands on the wall around Cas’s head, and lightly pressed his crotch into his boyfriend’s. The sharp points of his hipbones weren’t the only thing Dean felt pushing back on him. “Do you want to have sex with me, Cas?”

“Very much so.”

“Right now?” He punctuated with a roll of his hips. His lips were less than an inch from Cas’s. 

“Right now.”

“Let’s go, then.”

Dean closed the final distance between them and placed a quick but passionate kiss on his lips, then before Cas had time to properly kiss him back, he pulled Cas’s hand and lead him towards the bedroom.

*

The next morning, Cas and Dean spent a long morning lounging in bed, trading slow, salacious kisses, in no rush to start the day, but eventually Dean’s stomach informed them it was time to get up.

With a small chuckle, they left the bed and started dressing. Cas ended up wearing the shirt Dean had been wearing yesterday, as his own had made its way to the other side of the room with two buttons missing. Dean had spent another five minutes kissing him against the door when he saw that. 

They walked to the kitchen hand in hand, only stopping to make out again once. Cas instructed Dean to sit at the table then headed to the fridge to retrieve bacon and eggs, set a pot of coffee on, and got to frying.

Dean watched with rapt attention and an utterly enamored look on his face. He didn’t notice Sam had walked into the room and was surveying the scene until Cas turned around with the finished food and spoke. 

“Good morning, Sam. Would you like some breakfast?” Cas may have addressed Sam, but he didn’t look away from Dean as he walked over to the table.

“Seriously? It’s gone three o’clock! Have you two just got up?”

“Yep,” Dean said smugly.

Cas nudged his chair slightly closer to Dean’s and sat down, putting the plate and one of the mugs in front of him, and kept one to himself.

“Thanks, babe,”

Sam smiled. “I take it the talk went well then?”

“Very,” he said around a mouthful of bacon. “Didn’t do all that much talking though.”

Their hands that were holding the coffee cups occasionally brushed when one of them lowered the cup from their lips. Every time that happened, they would lock eyes and smile. They didn’t talk as Dean continued to inelegantly shovel eggs into his mouth and Sam fixed himself some lunch at the counter. The silence was broken by the sound of a small crash from the other side of the bunker, and the three of them turned their heads towards it. 

“It’s probably just Miracle getting in the treats again. I’ll go. You finish your food.”

Cas stood from his chair, then paused and looked at Dean, as if asking permission, which Dean granted with a nod and a small smile. Cas kissed the top of his head and left the room. 

Cas had only been gone a moment when Sam glared at Dean. “Alright, this is worse.”

“Huh?”

“You two.” Sam waggled his finger between his brother and the doorway Cas had just walked through. “I thought once you got all that unresolved sexual tension out of your systems you’d be easier to be around, but _that_? That was disgustingly soppy. I almost feel sick.”

“Really? I didn’t think we were acting all that different.”

“You called him babe!”

“No, I didn’t!” He sputtered. “I called him bud!”

“You definitely called him babe.”

Dean considered it for a second, then shrugged. “Okay, so maybe I did. It’s not that different from you and Eileen. You called her honey bear once.”

“I told you to forget that.” Sam’s face hardened.

“Never, Sammy.” Dean teased. “Was the kiss too much for you? Homophobe.”

Sam ignored that last remark.“It’s not what you were doing, it’s how he was looking at you.”

“I didn’t notice anything different.”

How could his brother be so oblivious to the way Cas looked at him? “That wasn’t his usual stare. He was looking at you like you were his own personal oxygen supply, like you hung the moon and stars in the sky, like he’s just discovered the meaning of life in your eyes.”

“Oh, I’m hung alright.” He waggled his eyebrows.

“Dean–”

“Seriously though, when did you become such a poet? That was beautiful.”

“When that became the best way to describe the absolutely besotted look on his face. I’ve never seen anyone look like that. What did you _do_ to him last night?”

“Well, I did this one thing with my tongue–”

Sam frantically waved his hands in front of his face. “Actually, scrap that. I don’t want to know. I never want to hear about your sex life again.”

Sam left the room with his hands over his ears, blocking out all the lewd things Dean was still saying. 

***

The next few weeks were a personal Hell for Sam, more so than his own experience down there. If Lucifer had really wanted to torture him, he would have played images of his brother and his best friend making out in every room in the bunker with no regard for its other occupants. He couldn’t even get a smoothie without seeing Dean’s hand creeping under Cas’s waistband where he had him shoved up against the fridge. 

Jack was luckier. He spent a lot of his time at his classes or, if he was in his room, he could use his powers to soundproof the room. Sam had been very annoyed when he found out that was an option, although he had enjoyed his extra time at Eileen’s. 

One rare occasion that Sam wasn’t hiding with Eileen and Dean wasn’t joined at the hip to Cas, Sam cornered Dean in the library. 

“I’m going to move in with Eileen,” he said, without any preamble. 

“Why?” Dean almost dropped his beer. “Do you feel like a third wheel with me and Cas? Too much PDA? ‘Cause we’ve been trying to tone it down after that last time you saw us, I swear. Did you hear us the other night? Because if you heard me yelling ‘harder’ in the garage, it wasn’t what it sounded like. We were trying to move one of those old cars we couldn't find a key for and Cas wasn’t pulling his weight.”

“No, no, no, it’s not that. It’s, uh–” he broke off, and chuckled lightly. “Eileen’s pregnant.”

Dean stopped still. He set his beer down on the nearby table so it didn’t fall through his shaking fingers and stared blankly at Sam. 

“She's what?” 

“Pregnant, Dean.” He made sure to enunciate it clearer this time.

“Like, with a baby?” Dean was struggling to find words. He blinked at Sam. 

“No, with a pineapple.” Sam rolled his eyes. “Look, I get that you’re shocked. Believe me, we were too. This wasn’t exactly planned, but we’re both really excited and I know this will change things a lot, but I think it’s time–”

Sam was cut off by Dean wrapping his arms around him. He squeezed so tightly, Sam actually struggled to breathe after a while. Dean let go after he started to tap out on his shoulder. 

“You’re having a baby?” Dean pulled back but didn’t completely let go, holding Sam around the elbows at arms length. 

“Well, Eileen is.” Sam said, after taking a few breaths to replenish his oxygen supply.

“You’re going to be a father?”

Sam fought off the urge to roll his eyes again. “Yep. She promises it’s mine.”

“I’m going to be an uncle?”

Was his brother getting stupider? “Yeah, that’s how this works, Dean.”

Dean pulled him back in for another bone-crushing hug and ignored his flailing.

“My baby brother’s all grown up. When did that happen?” He finally let go and pinched Sam on the cheek. 

Sam slapped his hand away. “I’m thirty-eight.”

“Exactly. Still a baby.”

“You’re okay with me moving out, then?” He took a few steps back so Dean couldn’t manhandle him again. “I thought you might have a hard time adjusting.”

He shrugged. “Figured this was going to happen sooner or later. You two love birds have been pretty serious for a while now. Wasn’t expecting the baby though; I thought you’d pop the old question first. You were always the type to do things ‘the right way’. Now look at you. An illegitimate love child. That’s my boy.” Dean booped him on the nose before Sam could take another swipe at him. 

“It’s not like that.”

“You gonna make an honest woman of her, then?”

Sam frowned. “I hadn’t thought about that. We’ve never discussed it. I don’t know what she thinks about marriage, actually,” he said sheepishly. 

“You not doing much talking when you’re ‘round her place then? No wonder the baby came first,” Dean teased. 

“Okay, are you done making jokes?”

“Never. Can’t wait for that kid to get here. She must be, what, twelve weeks, if you’re telling me?”

“She’s about fourteen now.”

Dean slapped the back of his hand into his chest. “Why’d you wait so long to tell me!”

“It’s been hard to find you when you’re vertical recently, Dean!”

That was a fair point. “Oh well, less time to wait.” He rubbed his hands together with glee. “I’m gonna be the coolest uncle. They’re going to prefer me to you, hands down. That kid’s going to _beg_ to spend time at Uncle Dean’s house.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re going to give them junk food.” 

“Precisely. No kid deserves to grow up eating your rabbit food. Anyway, I’m gonna go tell Cas.”

He turned and left the room. Sam could hear “Cas, where are you? I’m gonna be an uncle!” echoing from down the hallway. 

Sam smiled, then sat down at the table and propped his phone up on a stack of books and started up a video call. 

Eileen answered on the third ring. Sam thought she looked beautiful with her radiant pregnancy glow and full, flowing hair. She thought she looked like a puffy whale who kept throwing up in the toilet. 

“Hey. So I finally told him!” Sam spoke and signed at the same time. 

“About time!” She replied in the same manner. “Was he okay?”

“Yeah, he took it well.” He winced. “I think he broke a few of my ribs though.”


	3. Chapter 3

It had been quieter in the bunker since Sam moved into Eileen's. Bigger, somehow. Emptier. Dean couldn’t remember how he used to live there with just the two of them. 

Of course, he still got regular updates from Sam about his new life. He had been delighted to receive a copy of the first scan picture which made its way to the pride of place on the fridge. 

He spent the majority of mornings in bed with Cas, in part because they had no plans, but also because he had twelve years of sex to catch up on.

“Cas,” Dean laced his fingers into his boyfriend’s. “Now Sam’s moved out, maybe it’s time for us to find a place of our own.”

Cas grunted as sleepily as a being that doesn’t sleep could and kept kissing his way across Dean’s chest. 

“We don’t need all this space anymore, and we don’t need all these books on monsters we ain’t ganking,” Dean continued. 

“Don’t houses cost money? How will we afford it?” Cas lifted his head long enough to speak, then went straight back to kissing Dean’s left nipple. 

“Well, that’s the thing,” Dean got out of bed, shoving a very annoyed Cas off of him, and walked over to his closet and grabbed a large cardboard box. 

“I’ve been saving money for a while now. A few extra cons on the side, here and there. Just in case, y’know.” He sat back on the bed and put the box on Cas’s lap. “In case we ever had to up and run in a hurry or something to leave Sammy if I died.” Dean cleared his throat. “Never thought I’d get to use it for this, though. Should be enough for a deposit in there.”

Cas opened the box and looked inside. He pulled out handfuls of cash, mostly in singles, but a few higher denomination notes in there too, all neatly held together in elastic bands. “Dean, there must be thousands of dollars in here! How long have you been doing this?”

“Few years. What do you say then? Time to leave the bunker behind?”

Cas kissed Dean firmly. 

“I’ll take that as a yes, then. What do you fancy? An apartment in the city? We can move to LA and become film stars. Buy a yacht and sail it into the ocean? Spend the day whale watching and sunbathing? Get a house in the suburbs in an HOA and have nosey Karens spying on us every second of the day?”

Cas’s only answer was pining Dean back onto the bed and kissing him senseless.

***

They spent weeks searching online for the perfect house. Dean nearly tore his hair out reading mortgage pamphlets and threatened to just start squatting in the first empty house they saw in town. Cas had to kindly remind him several times that this was only the start of a normal human life, and it was only going to get harder after this. He didn’t like it that much. 

They finally found a house on the outskirts of a small town about half an hour from Sam and Eileen’s. It was a mile away from the nearest neighbors, down a winding gravel drive, and halfway into the woods. The house was in a small clearing with no fenced garden or lawn, just an expanse of wildflowers. At the back of the house, there was a short path through the trees to a small fishing lake that didn’t get many visitors, just the locals. 

It was in a bit of a state of disrepair but was structurally sound. Dean spent weeks after they bought it replastering the walls and ripping out the old rotting floorboards. 

Sam and Eileen came to visit when Dean was done. Sam helped her out of the car and up the stairs to the front door, as she cradled her ever-growing bump. 

“I still can’t believe you wouldn’t let us see it until it was finished,” Sam said after they had exchanged greetings. 

“I wanted you to have the full experience. And just so you know, I will be accepting zero criticism. This place has been my baby for months. Even Cas wasn’t allowed to help.” Dean lightly stroked the doorframe. 

“I helped you fit the stove,” Cas chimed up from his spot on the front porch. 

“Only because she was too heavy for any normal human to lift. Even if they’re as jacked as me.” Dean flexed his arms like a Victorian strong man. 

“Have you two got settled in okay?” Eileen asked.

“Yes. It’s been nice to finally actually live in this house that is legally half mine.” Cas paused to shoot a glare at Dean. “He hardly let me in while he was working. Jack wasn’t allowed in at all. He made Jack live in the bunker alone so he wouldn’t distract him.” Cas frowned disapprovingly.

“Jack needed to stay at the bunker to be near his classes, anyway,” Dean defended. 

“He can fly!”

“Still,”

Cas rolled his eyes. “And what about me? What’s your excuse for not letting me in?”

“I never did that!”

“You made me get a job in Walmart!”

Three looks of disapproval now were pointed at Dean. “We needed money and it was the only place hiring! Besides, being an angel doesn’t come with a bunch of transferable skills to a human job. Can’t exactly put ‘smiting’ on your resume.”

“Are _you_ ever going to get a job, or do I have to support this family alone?”

“I will now I’m done providing shelter for this family.”

“Okay!” Eileen stepped between the two of them and pushed them apart with a hand of each of their chests. “If you two are done bickering, can we actually see this house Sam took two wrong turns trying to find?”

“Stupid house in the middle of nowhere,” Sam muttered under his breath.

“Of course, Eileen.” Cas said brightly, choosing not to hear Sam. “Dean, show our guests in.”

Dean led them all through the patterned oak door he’d commissioned from a local carpenter and down a short, cream-wallpapered hallway. 

“So first of all, the living room. I kept some of the cottage’s original features, like the fireplace here, even though the chimney is too blocked to fix without smashing down the whole wall, but I fitted the new windows with double glazing.” He walked around the room, pointing to each feature in turn, and stopped to pat Miracle, who was curled up in his basket at the back of the room, next to the sliding glass door to the backyard. 

“Good natural light.” Sam had no idea about decorating and was just repeating a phrase he’d heard on a home design show last week. Unemployment wasn’t suiting him. 

“South facing,” he said proudly. “Through here to the dining room. I kept the exposed brick on the outer wall, but I had to replaster this one, where it was starting to chip. The wiring was a bitch in this room.” He mentally shuddered at the memory of trying to squeeze lighting cables through the very small gaps in the wall. 

“Nice curtains,” Sam smirked and pointed at the light yellow frilly drapes. 

“Cas’s idea.”

Cas side-eyed him from the back of the group. Dean led them to the next room, ignoring him. 

“The kitchen. I had to completely gut this room. The old counters were shot to shit and the fridge was from the thirties, so they all had to go. Had to redesign the layout but it gave me a chance to add this sexy lady,” he ran his hands over an enormous, industrial-sized stove. “One of the few things I miss about the bunker was that kitchen, so I tried to copy as much of it as possible.”

“You want me to leave the two of you alone?” Eileen teased after Dean spent slightly too long gazing at his new oven. 

“Yeah, Cas is going to be jealous if you get any more handsy with that thing.” Sam joined in. 

“I did catch him in here a few days ago, just staring at it.”

“Yeah, well, this baby has never tried to convince me to get a cat even though it knows I’m allergic,” Dean shot back at him. 

“Shall we go upstairs?” Eileen said loudly, trying to diffuse the fight before it got any further. 

Cas was the first to turn and storm out of the room, but Dean quickly followed him, determined to get to the top of the stairs first. 

_Aren’t they supposed to still be in the honeymoon phase?_ Eileen signed at Sam so they wouldn’t be overheard. _How do they already argue so much?_

_They’ve been in love with each other without realizing it for so long, they were already in old married couple territory before they even got together._

_You’re not worried about them?_ She asked upon seeing Sam’s dismissive face.

_Nah, this is foreplay to them. They’ll fuck as soon as we leave, I guarantee it._

They followed the boys out of the kitchen, making sure to remove their shoes before walking up on the freshly carpeted stairs. 

By the time they got to the second floor, Dean had Cas pinned up against the wall with his arms bracketing Cas’s head, their faces inches apart. They jumped apart when they saw they had company. 

_Told you._ Sam subtly signed at Eileen.

Dean cleared his throat. “So, uh, bathroom. Remodeled this too. Found the biggest, deepest tub possible. Gonna have so many bubble baths in here.”

“Bubble baths,” Eileen mouthed at Sam with over-exaggerated speech marks and winked. 

“Uh,” Sam said, pointing to a small framed painting of a cat walking through tall grass on the wall that he’d just noticed over her shoulder.

“Cas’s idea. This was our compromise ‘cause I wouldn’t let him get an actual cat.”

They left the bathroom and headed to the spare room. It was plainly decorated with light blue walls, a deep pile carpet, and simple furnishings. 

“Didn’t change much here. Just some new paint on the walls. The sofa folds out to a bed in case you guys come to stay. Jack’s room next. I’ll warn you, I let him decorate.”

The next room had a horrendous mix of furniture that didn’t match each other or the wall color. Said walls were covered in posters, magazine clippings and random junk Jack had accumulated, and the bedsheets a truly disgusting shade of green. Dean pursed his lips as he looked at the one blight in his otherwise perfect home. He quickly hurried everyone out of there and shut the door. 

“And finally, the master bedroom,” he said gleefully.

Sam took a few steps back. “I’ve seen what you two get up to in public. I don’t know if I want to see what’s in there.”

“What? You think we leave the whips and handcuffs just laying about?”

Cas tilted his head to the side. “Dean, we don’t have any whips.”

Sam pretended to retch. “See? That right there is why I don’t want to know what’s in that room.”

Dean grabbed his brother by the arm and dragged him inside. “Come and have a look, you big baby.”

There were blackout curtains covering the windows to allow Dean to sleep in well past dawn. The dresser, ottoman, and bedside tables were all different styles but worked well together. The king-size bed had a large wooden headboard, soft cotton sheets and–

“Throw pillows? Really?” Sam scoffed. 

“Cas’s idea.”

“No, they weren't. You bought those in Bed Bath and Beyond.”

“Traitor.” Dean lightly punched Cas’s shoulder. “So what if I like being comfy? It’s not a crime.”

Sam made his excuses as quickly as possible and left to go back downstairs. They all sat and chatted for about an hour until Sam started to get hungry. 

“So, are you going to cook me lunch on this new stove of yours?”

“Uh, hmm–” Dean stammered and rubbed the back of his neck. 

“Dean hasn’t actually cooked anything on his stove yet. He doesn’t want to ruin it.”

Sam looked disbelievingly at Dean.

“Look, she’s a fine lady, okay? She deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. I’m saving her for something special, not some salad or whatever it is you eat.”

“You don’t cook salad on a stove, idiot.”

“My point still stands. Anyway, there's a burger joint on the other side of town I've been wanting to check out. If you’re hungry, come with.”

Sam decided that was better than nothing. They put their shoes and coats back on then headed out to Dean's car. On muscle memory, Sam reached for the passenger door but was shoved aside by Dean. 

“You grow a human, you can ride shotgun.”

He opened the door and bowed like a footman to Eileen.

“Why, thank you, kind sir,” she played along. 

Dean took her hand and kissed it, then escorted her into the car and shut the door.

“That, Sammy, is how you charm a lady.”

Sam frowned at him. “I don’t need advice from my gay brother on how to flirt with my own girlfriend.”

“That is bisexual brother, thank you very much, and clearly you do. Making a lady in her condition sit in the backseat. Shame on you.” He shook his head. 

Cas had already made his way to the other seat in the back by the time Sam got in. Dean took Sam’s door before he could shut it and leaned in.

“Now you two behave back here, you hear me? No canoodling.” He pointed his finger at them sternly. 

Dean drove them all to the burger joint, Sam and Cas keeping themselves as far apart as was possible. The diner Dean had been so eager to try looked like every other greasy truck stop they’d ever eaten in, in every hick town across the country, but he still rubbed his hands together in anticipation. 

The young waitress led them to a booth at the back of the restaurant and handed them all menus. Sam was pleased to see they offered one vegetarian option, right at the bottom in the fine print. 

When the waitress brought out their food a few minutes later, Dean was absolutely overjoyed to see the heaping tower of meat on his plate, even if Sam did declare it a ‘cholesterol nightmare’. Dean in turn spent a long time mocking Sam’s pitiful bean patty, hidden by a mountain of lettuce.

Dean decided they were the best burgers he’d ever had, besides his own. He ate all of his, and the one Cas ordered to keep up appearances, as well as half of Eileen’s fries, despite Sam pointing out she was supposed to be eating for two. 

As they got up to leave, he saw a sign on the counter that said ‘ _Chef wanted. Ask Don for details’._ The gruff, no-nonsense man behind the counter was wearing a name badge that proclaimed him to be Don. Dean, riding on a burger high, confidently walked over to him. 

“You still hiring?”

Don looked up from where he was wiping a ketchup stain off the counter and gave Dean a once over. He didn’t look awed. “You got any experience?”

“Nothing professional, but I can make a mean burger.”

“It’s true,” Cas perked up from behind him. Sam and Eileen both made faces of agreement. 

Don considered it. “Alright. Be here Monday, 9 o’clock sharp, and if you impress me, you’ve got the job.”

“Nice one, man.” 

Dean almost went to fist-bump the guy but stopped himself at the last minute. Don didn’t seem the type to appreciate that. 

Dean slung his arm over Cas’s shoulders and headed back to the car. 

“Told you I’d get a job.”

***

On a rare day that their schedules lined up, and they both had a full day off work, Dean and Cas went for a drive. They set off early in the morning, with a cooler full of snacks and drove with no set destination. Every time they reached an intersection, Cas flipped a coin. Heads for left, tails for right, but never straight on. 

They had gotten stuck in the woods for over an hour because Cas kept throwing heads and leading them round in circles. They had almost driven straight into a farmer’s field because they didn’t pay attention to the road signs saying private road. They had spent twenty minutes trying to reunite a baby deer in the middle of the road with its mother off in the trees. 

Just as the sun was starting to set, they took a turn down a narrow dirt track that was so bumpy he apologized to his car’s suspension the whole way. The track led to a river separating two fields, one of wheat and the other corn. Dean parked the car and reached into the back for the beers, then gestured for Cas to get out. They sat on Baby’s hood and watched the sun disappear under the horizon, and the moon rise to take its place. 

Cas watched the purple light dance over Dean's content face, the shadows of the clouds reflecting on his eyes. Cas put his bottle down on the ground and took his hand.

“I want to be human.”

Dean spat out his beer. “What?”

Cas turned to look at him fully. “I want to be human. I want to cut my grace out.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been thinking; I have a nice human job, a nice human house, a nice human boyfriend.” Cas used his free hand to stroke Dean’s face. “It’s time for me to be human, too.”

“You want to give up all of your powers, your immortality, for a job at Walmart?”

“For _you_ . For the first few billion years of existence, I believed in God's way, following the divine path. But that wasn’t really _living_ . These last nearly fourteen years, ever since I met you, _this_ has been my real life.

“I used to think I knew happiness when I commanded my garrison, when I followed God’s orders blindly, but when I was appointed to watch over the humans and saw every little thing they did, I became enamored with humanity, though I didn’t realize it at the time. 

“How much I envied them and their free will! Free from orders, free from the fight. When I was tasked with pulling you from hell, I spent hours gazing upon your soul in reverence. Even after all that time down there, you still shone brighter than any other I’d ever seen. I thought I knew then why they called you The Righteous Man, but spending all these years in your company has shown me more and more every day how much you deserve that title.

“I thought happiness would be just telling you about my feelings for you. I’d dreamed of that moment, but I had always feared seeing rejection in your face. Disgust. And it deterred me from ever saying anything at all. I let The Empty take me before you had the chance to respond. When Jack brought me back, I was too scared to look you in the eye for fear of your rejection, but it never came. If I thought true happiness was in just saying it, it was nothing compared to the day I looked into your eyes and knew for sure that if I kissed you, you wouldn’t push me away. That I could have you, _truly_ have you, forever.

“And every day since, I’ve found a new happiness. If you’d asked me two months ago, my true happiness would have been watching you paint the walls of Jack’s bedroom that hideous shade of orange, because you knew he’d love it. If you’d asked me a month ago, I’d have said watching you slowly come back to consciousness after a night asleep in my arms, opening your eyes, and smiling when you saw me. 

“And right now? My true happiness is watching you take in the beauty of creation. How you must have seen a thousand sunsets in your life, but it still amazes you every time. Every day with you is the new best day of my life.

“I haven’t forgotten my time as a human before. It was more difficult, yes, so much more effort just to stay alive, but it was also so wonderful. The feelings were more intense. The heat of the fire on a cold night and how it warmed me to the bones. The feeling of soft cotton on my skin. How a good night's sleep on a firm mattress would leave me revitalized and with a new perspective on the issues plaguing me.

“And not just the physical sensations. I still remember how it felt the first time I saw you as a human. When I’d been lost and alone, and you came to find me. How desolate I felt when you kicked me out of the bunker. I want to feel that again, the good and the bad. I want to wake up with you every day, eat with you, grow old with you. I want to be human with you.”

By the time Cas finished, both of them had tears streaming down their faces. Dean used the sleeve of his plaid shirt to wipe his cheeks. 

“Jeez, Cas. You can’t drop a speech like that with no warning. You’ve got a bad habit of doing that, you know?” He laughed humorlessly. Cas laughed with him. “What if I get hurt? You won’t be able to heal me anymore.”

“Now you’ve quit hunting, your chances of getting seriously injured are greatly reduced. Small injuries and problems are part of the human experience, and anything major, we can always call on Jack for help.”

Dean wiped his sleeve across Cas’s face too, then held his chin to keep his face looking at him. 

“You’d give up all of heaven? You’d Fall for me?”

“I’ve already fallen for you a thousand times, what’s one more?”

“Cas, I–”

Dean couldn’t think of the right words to say, so he tried to put it all into a kiss. He pulled their bodies as close together as he could and clenched his hands into the skin of Cas’s waist in a way he knew would bruise a normal human. 

“You’re one hundred percent about this?”

“Definitely.”

“Sure you don’t want to flip for it?” Dean smirked.

Cas reached into his trench coat pocket and pulled out the quarter he’d been flipping all day. “Heads for angel, tails for human.”

He spun the coin with a well-practiced flick high above his head, then caught it and covered it on the back of his hand. 

“Well don’t leave me hanging, babe, what’d you get?”

Cas lifted his hand to reveal the tails-up coin. 

“You cheated! You used your mojo on that.” Dean nudged his shoulder lightly into Cas’s. 

“Didn’t need to. It seems fate is on my side today.”

“Well, who am I to argue with fate?”

Dean kissed him on the cheek. 

“Okay, then,” Cas got his angel blade out of his sleeve. 

“Woah, woah, woah. Hold your horses. Not right now.” Dean took his wrist and lowered it into his lap.

“Why not?” Cas squinted his eyes. 

“Because once you start slicing, you’ll be human.”

Cas looked at him like he was stupid. “Yes, Dean, that’s the point.”

“Yeah, and humans bleed. We’re in the middle of nowhere, we’ve got no antiseptic. You really want to do this here?”

Cas sighed. “You’re right. When we get home, then.”

“We’ll have a few other things to sort, too. Gotta get you some food, some clothes, a toothbrush, start buying more toilet paper. Let’s get everything ready first. Don’t want to just drop you in it this time.”

Dean squeezed his hand. 

“You’re off work again tomorrow, yeah?”

Cas nodded.

“Go to the mall, buy yourself some clothes and essentials. I’ll make you a list, a ‘How To Be Human 101’, then when everything’s ready, we’ll do it. Okay?”

“Okay,” 

Cas pulled him in for another kiss. 

*

_I’m glad you could come,_ Cas signed at Eileen as they met in the parking lot in the mall. 

He’d told her of his plans when he got home very late the night before. She’d been very eager to help. 

_I’ve been meaning to buy some things for this little one for a while. I’m a bit behind._ She patted her bump. _You never did tell me where you learned ASL._

_I’m an angel. I know every language. I speak to the customers sometimes in their native languages. They seem to appreciate it. Someone from corporate came to visit the other day and was very impressed. How’s Sam’s new job going?_

Sam had finally got a job in a small legal office a few towns over from where he and Eileen lived. Dean had had slightly too much fun pretending to be Sam’s former boss giving his reference over the phone, but thankfully, Sam’s new manager hadn’t picked up on all the innuendos. 

_Very boring. Lots of documents and contracts and legal jargon. I look the other way when he’s talking about work._

They walked into the first clothes store they could see at the front of the mall. Cas didn’t notice the name of the shop, but it looked like every other clothes shop chain he’d ever seen. They headed to the baby section first. 

_You still don’t know what you’re having?_

_No, we want it to be a surprise._

Eileen picked up some tiny booties and put her fingers in them to make them walk. 

_So cute._

She added them to her basket along with some equally tiny baby clothes in a variety of neutral colors and styles. 

Cas found a top with a picture of a sheep on it that he liked. He walked over to a nearby shop assistant. 

“Excuse me, do you have this in a bigger size?”

The young woman replied in a friendly, upbeat voice. “I think we might have up to age 5 out back if you want me to check?”

Cas shook his head. “No, I mean, do you have this in adult sizes? This won’t fit me.”

The assistant looked like she was trying not to laugh. 

“No sir, that’s for babies.”

“Sorry about him. He’s a bit–” Eileen spun her finger in a circle around her ear and took Cas by the shoulders to push him away. “Let's stick to the adult section, huh?”

Eileen led him towards the men’s clothing, not letting him look behind himself, where the sales assistant was already telling the story of what just happened to her colleague. The two of them laughed. 

_What size do you wear?_ she signed to distract him. 

_I’m not sure. Dean’s clothes seem to fit me okay._

Eileen grabbed a pair of jeans from a nearby rack and held them up to Cas’s waist. She shook her head and grabbed a size bigger. With a nod of approval, she handed them to Cas. 

_That should fit. Find a few more in that size_

Cas picked up a few more pairs of jeans, then some cargo pants, and a pair of yellow shorts that Eileen made him put straight back. 

They found Cas’s shirt size by making him kneel so Eileen could read the label at the back of his neck, then they grabbed a few casual shirts, graphic tees and jackets then moved on to pajamas and underwear. Cas was particularly taken with a pair of underwear with bees on them. 

_Go try them on,_ Eileen signed, then pushed him towards the changing rooms. 

After Cas had his first outfit on, Eileen made him do an imaginary runway walk through the clothing aisles that he did not enjoy one bit. She laughed at his sullen expression the whole time. Once they’d tried everything on, they put a few clothes on the discard piles and went to pay for the rest. 

_Wait._ Eileen stopped him just before he got to the till. _How are you going to afford this? Dean’s only just started his job, and you work part-time. Plus Dean just did all those renovations._

Cas pulled out a credit card. _This is Dean's last counterfeit card. After this, we’re doing everything legally._

***

“This Smagora hates me.”

Dean threw a white wooden panel to the floor. 

“It’s Smågöra, and you’re doing it wrong. That screw goes on the other side.” Sam said in a patronizing voice. 

“Aren’t all screws the same?”

“No! Have you even read the instructions?”

Dean slapped the paper in his lap with the back of his hand. “They’re in Swedish!”

“Look on the other side, you dumbass.”

Dean turned the page over.

“Oh,”

“Seriously, man, I asked you to help because I thought you’d be good at this. You remodeled your whole house single-handedly, you’ve rebuilt your car from the wheels up, but you can’t assemble a crib?”

“That’s different. Cars are easy. This? This is torture. I’ll take Hell a hundred times over if I never have to look at this smorgasbord again.”

“Smågöra,”

“Whatever.”

“Come on, dude. You’ve killed Hitler. You can do this.”

Sam patted him on the shoulder.

“You’re right. I killed Hitler. I can do anything. I’ve killed Hitler, I’ve killed Hitler…”

He trailed off mumbling his mantra to himself. He picked up a screw and confidently placed it in a hole in the wood. The too-small immediately fell back out. He threw the paper to one side. 

“I quit. Cas, I lied. I don’t want a normal human life. I’m going back to hunting.”

Cas looked over from where he was painting stencils in the shape of dinosaurs on the walls. 

“Yes, dear,”

He went back to painting. 

“I mean it. I’m going to find a ghost and shoot it.”

“You do that,” Cas said, without looking up. 

“I hate you.”

“Love you, too.”

“Ugh, can’t you make yourself useful and come and mojo this fixed?”

“I told you. I’m practicing living as a human, so that means no powers.”

“I’ll call Jack, then.”

“You cannot summon the Almighty to do your household chores. And besides, he’s studying. His exams are in two days.”

Dean groaned again. 

Sam picked up the instructions from the floor. “Dean, you hold this in place and I’ll screw it, alright?”

Sam picked up the correct screw and screwed it into the hole. “See? Instructions.” He waved them in Dean’s face. 

“Show off,”

They worked together in this way until the crib was finished. Dean pushed all his weight on it to check it was sturdy. 

“Seems good. Eh, that wasn’t so bad.” 

He collapsed back onto the floor.

“Good,” Sam said, before leaving the room and returning with a flat pack box with a picture of a child’s dresser on the front, “because we still need to assemble the Songesand.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

***

“You ready?”

Dean steadied his grip on the angel blade. 

“I have been for a while now, Dean. It’s you that’s been making me wait.”

“You can change your mind at any time.”

“I’m not going to.”

Dean placed the very tip of the blade to Cas’s throat, then sighed and let go. 

“Are you sure you don’t want Jack here?”

“No, I want this to scar. I want to be reminded every day of the choice I made. Now stop stalling.”

“Alright, bossy.”

He took a firm grasp of the back of Cas’s neck to keep him still. With a skilled hand, he sliced a two-inch cut into his throat, just above his Adam’s apple. White, wispy grace started to flow from the wound, which he caught in a small glass vial and sealed. He dropped the knife with a clatter on the floor. 

“Are you okay? How do you feel?” Dean couldn’t stop himself from patting every inch of Cas, as if we would fall apart at any moment. 

Cas took some breaths then smiled. 

“Amazing,”

Cas leaned forward to kiss Dean, but Dean stopped him. “Woah, slow your roll, you horny bastard. Let’s sort you out first. Drink this,”

Dean put down the vial on the bed and handed Cas a half-full bottle of whiskey. Cas took a large gulp then winced. “Ugh, I forgot how strong that is as a human.”

Dean gathered the things from the first aid kit he had ready next to him. He held an absorbent dressing over the wound to try and stop the bleeding. Luckily, he’d had the foresight to make Cas unbutton his shirt so he wouldn’t get blood on it. Cas took over holding the dressing when Dean started looking for the needle. His hands were shaking so much, it took him several attempts to get the thread through the eye. Cas flinched at the first sharp touch to his skin. 

“Drink more. It will help.”

Cas drank more. “This stuff is disgusting.”

“You get used to it. Now stop talking and sit still.”

Dean only managed to get a few more stitches done because Cas continued to squirm. 

“Right, if you don’t stop that, I’m going to sit on you and pin you down.”

“Promise?” Cas looked at him with big, hopeful eyes. 

“Human you is such a dog. I’m nearly done, okay?”

Dean finished up the stitches, wiped it down with antiseptic then covered it in a large plaster. 

“There. All done. Now you can quit your whini–”

Cas cut him off with a kiss. In all the resulting commotion, no one noticed the first aid kit and the small glass vial get shoved to the floor.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in the end notes

The last few weeks of Eileen’s pregnancy were the longest of Dean’s life. He spent almost all of his time at her house to keep an eye on her. Whenever he couldn’t make it over there, he was texting her constantly to check she hadn’t gone into labor yet, despite her constant assurance that she would inform him of any developments.

Jack was finally allowed to move into the new house after he passed his GED with flying colors. Dean insisted on throwing a party for Jack’s entire class, which led to a strange mix of people descending on his house. 

He’d been expecting mostly teenagers, but there were several older people there, too. His favorite was an elderly Dominican man who spoke very poor English but demolished Dean in a drinking contest, then went and helped himself to the chip and dip like he was completely unaffected. 

An old hunter friend of theirs, Gail, was looking to retire a bit from the life; her knees weren’t what they used to be, and she couldn’t have ghosts throwing her up against walls anymore. They gave her the keys to the bunker so she could help other hunters with the lore and still save people, even if it was in a slightly less hands-on manner. 

One Tuesday afternoon, Dean got a phone call while he was clipping his toenails over the trash can in the living room. Cas thought this was one of the most disgusting aspects of human life, and always left the room. He was hiding upstairs with Jack playing on his new games console that he’d gotten as a celebration present. Cas did very well on the strategy-based games, thanks to his billions of years commanding heavenly armies, but failed miserably on the first-person shooters. 

“Well, why didn’t you tell me! Eileen promised she’d tell me as soon as it happened!” came Dean’s frustrated voice from downstairs. 

“We knew you’d freak out like this and we needed a calm environment!” replied Sam’s voice from the other end of the phone, loud enough to be heard even without angel hearing. 

“An hour ago. My nephew has been on this earth for a whole hour and you only tell me now?”

Cas could hear the sound of Dean’s footsteps increase as he paced frantically across the floor. 

“You know, it is my baby, not yours. I’m allowed to want to spend time with him alone.”

“Well, time’s up, bitch. We’re coming to visit!”

Dean hung up the phone, then ran to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up, “Cas! Jack! We’ve got a baby to meet!”

*

Dean was positively buzzing with excitement by the time they got to the hospital. He ran through the maternity ward, past the flummoxed midwives, until he found the right room. Cas and Jack followed behind him, apologizing profusely to them all for his behavior. 

Dean burst into the room with the number on it that the woman on the front desk had told him without knocking. 

“Sammy!” he exclaimed and enveloped his unsuspecting brother in a hug. Over Sam's shoulder, he could see Eileen sitting up in the bed with a small bundle of blankets in her arms. Dean threw Sam away from him and walked towards her. 

_Baby,_ he signed proudly.

“Yes, Dean. This is a baby.” She adjusted the bundle so it was tilted slightly more upright and Dean could see the tiniest hint of a face. 

Dean beamed at the praise. “Cas has been teaching me.” He turned back to Sam and signed _Moose._

Sam pursed his lips. “Real mature, dude. Couldn’t you have taught him something else?” He addressed the last sentence at Cas, who had finally caught up and entered the room with much less fanfare. 

“I taught him a lot of words. That’s all he remembers. That and beer.”

Dean shrugged. “I’ve got the essentials down. Now is anyone going to introduce me to my nephew?”

“Dean,” Eileen said, passing the baby to him, “this is Harrison Blake Winchester.”

Dean stared down at the tiny face now in his arms. His eyes were closed but his mouth was open, and he was taking little huffing breaths. He was perfect.

“Really? You didn’t name him after me?” Dean looked offended. 

“No, that would be dumb.” Sam lightly slapped Dean on the shoulder, not hard enough to jostle the baby. 

“How dare you. Dean is a great name.”

“It would be a bit confusing, though,” Eileen pointed out. 

He considered that. “Fair point. I am still alive. Thought you might have named him after someone else we’ve lost, though.”

“We thought about it, but then we realized we’d have to give him, like, a hundred middle names so we just picked two random names we liked.”

“I like the name.”

“Thank you, Jack,” Sam said appreciatively. At least someone valued his choices. 

Dean looked back at Harrison. He could hardly remember when Sam was that small. Harrison yawned and opened his eyes, which Dean was surprised to see were the exact same shade as Sam’s. He wiggled an arm free of the blankets and waved it in the air. Dean tickled his tiny hand with his finger.

Eileen smiled at the scene. “You’re a natural. Sam looked like I handed him a bomb at first.” 

“I didn’t want to squash him,” Sam defended himself. 

Dean made a series of silly faces at Harrison, who didn’t seem at all interested, and closed his eyes again. 

“Dean, stop hogging him. Let Cas have a go,” Sam berated. 

Dean passed Harrison to Cas and started giving him instructions. “One arm here. The other under his head.”

Cas frowned at him. “I have held babies before, Dean.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Well, then you’re practically Supernanny,” Dean sassed. 

“When have you ever held a baby?” Sam asked curiously. 

“Last time I was human, a coworker of mine invited me over to babysit.”

“And you thought you were getting laid,” Dean interjected. 

Cas looked embarrassed. “I misread the situation.”

“And before that?” Sam prompted.

“It was before I knew you.”

“How long before?”

“About two thousand years. My father told every angel we were to bestow a gift upon this child. So I went to a barn next to a small inn in the middle of the desert and placed a blessing on him.”

“Blessing? What kind of blessing?” Dean was very intrigued. Cas didn’t often talk about his life before he met the Winchesters. 

“Abilities. Every angel gave him something different. Gabriel gave him the power to rise from the dead. Balthazar, the power to heal the sick.”

“And you?”

“The power to curse fig trees.”

Dean scoffed. “That's specific.”

“My father said it would be important one day.” Cas tapped the baby’s nose. “This baby is much prettier.”

“Clearly, he takes after Eileen.”

Sam choose to ignore that. “Okay, let Jack have a go. Wait,” he paused. “What is Jack to Harry?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well we all kind of adopted Jack so if Jack is my son, then they’d be brothers. And legally, Jack is Cas’s kid and you’re dating Cas so he’s, kind of, your stepson, which would make them cousins, or step-cousins, at least. But biologically, he’s Cas’s nephew, so what would _that_ make them?”

Everyone looked very confused. They were all silent for a minute while they mulled over this information.

Dean was the first to speak. “Shall we just settle for uncle? It’s what most kids call adults they aren’t related to but are still close to. Like we used to call Bobby ‘Uncle’ when we were kids.”

“Jack?” Sam looked to him for his approval.

“I like Uncle. Uncles are good.” He smiled at Cas.

Cas handed Harrison to him. Jack was hesitant, but he remembered Dean’s advice from earlier and made sure to support his head. 

“Hello, Harrison. I’m your Uncle Jack.”

Dean pulled something out of his pocket. “Nearly forgot. Here,” 

He handed it to Eileen. “Made you a little something. It’s been a while since I’ve had to make an EMF meter out of a Walkman so my wiring skills were a bit rusty.”

Eileen gave him a quizzical look.

“It’s a vibrating baby alarm,” he explained. “The bracelet is connected to the receiver so when he cries, it’ll buzz. It’s got two settings. A soft one for daytime and a more intense one that’s strong enough to wake you up. I know ‘cause I tested it on Cas. If it can make Cas jump out of bed and throw a pillow at me before his coffee, it’ll work on anybody.”

Cas shot daggers at him. “It’s the only time I’ve wished I had my grace again, so I could throw him back into Hell.”

“So yeah, it works.”

Sam looked pleasantly surprised. “That’s actually really thoughtful, Dean.”

“I’m sure I’ll hate you for this torture device in a week.” Eileen tried the plain white bracelet on. 

Cas reached into his own pocket for his gift, his eyes still burning a hole in the back of Dean’s head. “I made you something, too. And no one had to suffer for these.” 

“You stabbed me with the needles three times while you made those.”

“I was still mad at you.”

Cas handed Eileen a pair of pale cream baby booties, intricately knitted with impossibly tiny stitches, and a small bow on each side. 

“Aww, these are so cute.”

“Thank you. I saw how much you liked the ones in the shop, so I thought you’d like these. They weren't as easy as I thought to make. I had to watch a YouTube tutorial.”

Jack pouted. “I feel bad. I didn’t get you guys a gift.”

“That’s okay Jack, you didn’t have to,” Sam assured him. 

“No, I do.” He thought about it for a moment. “If it worked so well for the last God–”

Jack adjusted the baby so he was holding him in one arm and used his free hand to poke two fingers to Harrison's forehead. 

“–I’ll give him a blessing.”

Sam had realized what Jack was about to do a second too late. “Uh, what biblical ability did you just give my son?” His mind was reeling with the possibilities of having a super-powered newborn to look after. 

Jack beamed, oblivious to the tension in the room. “He will be an excellent swimmer. It will be important one day.”

All the adults in the room shared a questioning look. No one was quite sure what to say about that.

“Anyway,” Dean interrupted the silence, “time for a picture. Jack, give Harrison back to Eileen.” He wanted the baby out of Jack’s reach as soon as possible, in case he changed his mind and gave him the power of flight or Spider-Man climbing the walls. 

Harry barely stirred as he was moved. He only let out a slight whine, then scrunched his face up and went back to sleep. 

Sam squatted down next to the bed and put his arm around Eileen. Dean took out his phone, the latest model that he’d only had a week, and pointed it at them. They both smiled genuine smiles at the camera. Dean took the picture and showed them. 

“That’s awful.” Eileen looked affronted.

“What do you mean?” 

Dean took another look at the photo. Eileen looked fine in it to him, her eyes were shining brightly and she had little dimples in her cheeks he’d never noticed before. Maybe she was a little bit flushed, but that was to be expected for a woman who’d just given birth. 

“Have you never taken a picture before? You have to focus the camera. Look at me, I’m all blurry. You can hardly tell who I am.”

“Stupid phone,” he muttered to himself. The camera was supposed to be better in this edition, but clearly, it still sucked. Dean took another photo, tapping the screen this time to get Eileen in focus, then turned the phone around for her to see. 

“Much better.”

*

Dean spent the entire car ride home practically bouncing in his seat. He didn’t shut up about how perfect his new nephew was, about how cute he was in all the pictures he took, how adorable his little clothes were. Cas sat in the passenger seat and hummed affirmatives whenever Dean paused for breath.

Jack headed off to his bedroom the second they got back to upload all of the pictures onto his laptop, leaving Cas and Dean alone. 

“Alright, babe, what gives?” Dean turned to Cas as soon as he heard Jack’s bedroom door slam. 

“What do you mean?” Cas replied. 

“Don’t play dumb. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you moping since we left the hospital. You barely said a word the whole ride home. What happened? Was it something I said? Was it something Sam said? Because if it was I’ll beat his ass.”

“It’s nothing.”

Cas tried to distance himself from Dean and headed to the other side of the hallway. 

“Now, come on. You’re the one who said we had to communicate. Talk about our feelings and shit. So–” 

Dean took his hand and dragged him to the living room, then lightly pushed him so he fell back onto the couch. 

“–tell me what’s eating you.”

Cas looked away from him. “Really, it’s nothing.”

“Cas,” Dean admonished. He sat next to Cas and pulled his legs up so his knees were over Dean’s lap. Cas buried his head into Dean’s shoulder. 

He sighed. “It’s just… You were so good with the baby today.”

Dean furrowed his brow. 

“Okay… And why are you upset about that?”

“Because you’d make an amazing father. I know your own father wasn’t exactly a role model. Mine wasn’t either. But you’re good with kids. You absolutely adored Harrison. You loved seeing those kids trick or treating last year. You’ve even gotten much better with Claire, and she’s a handful for most. But because you’re with me, you’re never going to be able to have kids of your own. I’m keeping that from you.”

Cas couldn’t meet Dean’s eyes. He sat up slightly so his head was no longer touching Dean. Dean took his face between his hands. 

“No, no, no, hey. Don’t think like that, okay? I chose _you_. You _and_ all your associated man-parts. I knew what that would mean for the future. But family don’t end in blood. I don’t need biological kids, I have Jack. He’s as much mine as he is yours, and way more than he ever was Lucifer’s”

“But–”

“But nothing. This is enough for me. _You_ are enough for me. Scrap that, you are everything to me. You two are my family.”

“But—”

“I don’t need a newborn of my own to deal with. I am raising a grown adult toddler antichrist nephilim who also happens to be God. I’m all parented out, okay?”

Cas smiled. “Okay.”

Dean kissed him on the top of his head. 

***

Sam was watching TV one evening after a particularly stressful day at work, and keeping half an eye on Harry, who was playing under his mobile on the living room floor. Eileen was folding the laundry and caught sight of something in Sam’s sock drawer. She decided she’d had enough. 

She reached inside and pulled out a small square object and took it downstairs. 

“Sam, what’s this?”

She put the blue velvet box on the armrest of his chair. 

Oh no. This wasn’t how Sam planned this. He stammered and muted the tv. Before he could say anything coherent, Eileen started again. 

“Because it looks like a ring box. I couldn’t be sure, of course, so I looked inside. And what do you know!”

She opened the box to reveal a silver band with a subtle diamond and sapphire inlay. “A ring! And do you know what the problem with it is?”

“No?” Sam panicked. Did she not like it? He’d spent hours choosing the perfect one in more than a dozen jewelry stores across three states. 

“It’s not on my finger. I found this months ago and I’ve been waiting, oh so patiently, but this very pretty ring is still in this box under your nastiest socks. Great hiding place, by the way. So what gives?”

Sam stammered again. 

“You didn’t think I’d say yes?”

“It’s not that.”

“It’s for someone else?”

“No!”

“So…?”

Crap. How could he redeem himself now? All of his defenses sounded like pathetic whining.

“I’ve been waiting for the right moment. Some alone time, something romantic, but it’s been difficult with Harry now.”

Harry punctuated this point by squealing from his mat and kicking his feet in the air. 

“Well, at this rate, you’re not going to propose until he’s in high school, so–”

She took the ring out of its box and put it on her finger. 

“Hmm. It fits.”

She held her hand out in front of herself and admired how the light gleamed off the jewels. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. That can’t be it. That can’t be our engagement story. Let me at least do this properly.”

Sam got onto one knee in front of her and took both of her hands in his. He rubbed his thumb over the ring that suited her so well, it was almost like she’d been born with it in place. He kissed the fingers of her left hand before letting go so his hands were free. 

_Eileen Leahy,_ he signed, _I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?_

She shrugged nonchalantly. “Yeah, alright.” 

Oh yeah. This was the right woman for him. Sam smiled then got to his feet and leaned down to kiss her. 

***

Jack had started applying for colleges almost as soon as he passed his exams. He spent weeks working on his admission essays, rewriting some, rewording others, and using his powers to disintegrate the ones he hated the most. He still hadn’t decided on a major when he was accepted into Stanford University, much to Sam’s delight.

Dean was adamant about packing all of his things into the trunk of the Impala, and driving him all the way to California, even though Cas kept telling him that Jack can fly and could have gone on his own. Dean insisted it was the principle of the thing; parents are supposed to take their kids to college and embarrass them in front of their new dorm mates. He did also want to test out the new mini fridge he’d bought for him. 

Dean wouldn’t admit it, but he weirdly missed yelling at Jack to keep the volume down at three in the morning, missed making three portions of eggs in the morning, missed being asked to proofread essays on subjects he didn’t understand. 

It wasn't until Christmas that Jack came from college for the first time. Even though he could have flown back in a split second at any time, he wanted the authentic college experience, minus the pricey plane tickets. Plus his friends might find it suspicious if he managed to go home for dinner halfway across the country every evening. 

Dean had finally decided this was an important enough occasion to use his stove for the first time, which made Cas very happy. He’d eaten nothing but microwave meals ever since he’d become human. 

This would also be the first time he’d be cooking for Sam and Eileen. They had decided to have Thanksgiving with just the three of them, as it was their first holiday as a family. Sam had burnt the stuffing. And the gravy. And the mashed potatoes. Dean had no idea how he was related to such a disaster of a chef. 

Dean greeted his brother, nephew, and soon-to-be sister-in-law on the front porch wearing a novelty apron over his clothes. The french maid outfit decorated apron had been a present from Cas earlier that morning. Sam instantly tried to shield Harry’s eyes from the sight. Dean called him a prude and waggled his hips at Eileen, who then slapped his ass. 

Lunch wasn’t going to be for another hour so Sam fed Harry a small snack of some disgusting-looking mashed pea monstrosity.

“Ew,” Dean commented as he entered the kitchen to check on the turkey and saw Sam with Harry on his knee. “Are you trying to poison him?”

“This is what you feed babies who are just starting to eat solids, Dean.”

“Poor thing. Let me know when he’s got some teeth and I’ll bring him over a steak.”

Sam frowned at him and fed Harry another spoonful. “We think he might be teething soon. He’s started to get real fussy recently.”

Dean put down his turkey baster and crossed the room. He put his finger under Harry’s top lip and lifted it.

“Ugh, baby mouths are weird. All gummy and shit. But yeah, I think you’re right. See that there?”

There was the tiniest slither of white sticking out of his bottom gum. 

Sam smiled and tickled Harrison up his chest. “Good boy, Harry!” He kissed him on the top of his head then fed him another bite.

Sam turned to Dean, who was back tending to his turkey. “God, they hit milestones so quickly at this age. And no swearing in front of the baby.”

Dean mockingly imitated him. “If I’m going to be the cool uncle, I need to set my reputation early. What else is he up to these days? Walking, talking?”

“He’s still a bit young for that. He copies sounds sometimes. He got a few vowel sounds down. He sleeps through the night now,” he ended with a proud, and relieved, smile. 

“Bet you two are enjoying that, huh?”

“So much. It’s not every night yet, but most. Eileen can’t wait to smash that bracelet you gave her with a mallet.”

“Rude.”

Sam scooped the last remnants from the pot and waggled the spoon like an airplane into Harry’s giggling mouth, then wiped off the green mess he’d made over his chin with a tissue. 

“We’re teaching him sign language, too.”

“Really? Does that go well?”

Sam stood up and put Harry over his shoulder and began to rub his back. 

“A lot of hearing parents teach their children sign language. They can pick it up quicker than spoken language at this age. And, of course, it will be useful for Eileen when he’s older. Oh, crap,”

Harry had vomited most of his lunch into the back of Sam’s shirt. 

“Damn it, I forgot the freaking burp cloth.”

“Now who needs to watch their language,” Dean teased. 

Sam just pursed his lips.

“Give him to me,” Dean said, shutting the oven and reaching for him. “You go rinse that off, or something.”

“Spit up doesn’t come off that easily. I’ll just change.”

Sam handed Harry over, then tried to contort his neck to look properly over his shoulder. It didn’t look good. With a curse under his breath, he left the room. 

Dean leaned around the door to check he was gone, then set Harrison down on the floor with his back up against the kitchen counter. 

“Okay, Harry, repeat after me.”

Dean put his hands, palms forward and fingers outstretched, and the side of his head, with his thumbs touching his temple.

“Moose. Your turn.”

Harry just giggled. 

Dean repeated the movement. “See. Moose.”

Harry made no attempt to copy him, so Dean took his tiny hands and held them in place for him. Harry just smacked himself on the head and laughed again. 

“C’mon, buddy, we don’t have much time. Copy Uncle Dean.”

Dean did the sign again, and this time, Harry waved his hands above his head like he was on a rollercoaster. 

“Nearly, buddy, a bit lower. Like this, see?”

Harry held his hands by his ears and closed them into fists, then opened them again. 

Dean could hear Sam’s heavy footsteps coming back down the stairs. 

“That will have to do.”

Dean picked him back off the floor and acted like he’d been bouncing him on his hip the entire time when Sam re-entered the room, now wearing a smart maroon shirt. 

Sam took the baby back and held him to his side.

“Did you have fun with Uncle Dean?” Sam said in a baby voice to Harry. 

“Heck yeah, we did,” Dean replied on his behalf. “Show him, Harry.”

Dean signed, _Moose_ , then mentally crossed his fingers that his teaching had been effective.

Harry lifted his fingers up to his head and copied the sign, the best he’d done so far.

Dean let out a cheer and high-fived Harry still raised hand. Sam didn’t look pleased.

“Can I not even leave you alone with my son for two minutes?”

“Hey, I’m a great babysitter.”

“Last time I let you babysit, you sent him back with his diaper on backward.”

“It was on, wasn’t it!”

Sam was so done with Dean’s bullshit, he didn’t even bother responding. He just sighed and took Harry to the living room where Cas and Eileen were. Even hearing Cas talk about his new beekeeping book was preferable to another second in his brother’s company. 

Dean spent another half an hour in the kitchen before deciding everything was cooked. 

“Jack! Get your magic ass down here and help me get this to the table!” he yelled up the stairs. 

Jack appeared right in front of him, scaring the shit out of him.

“Christ, kid. Can’t you walk?”

“I’m hungry. I thought this would be quicker. I’ve missed your cooking,” he said as they walked back to the kitchen.

“Ramen is part of the college package, I’m afraid. Now, you grab those sprouts and _walk_ –” Dean pointed a spatula at him, “–them to the dining room.

Jack picked up the bowl and popped one into his mouth. Ugh. Dean had no idea why Jack loved those disgusting things so much. He definitely got that from Cas’s side of the species.

Once they’d managed to set the table with all the food that Jack hadn’t eaten, Dean called for the rest of them to come to join. Eileen went and got the high chair out of the car and set Harry at the head of the table. 

“So how’s work, Sam?” Cas asked Sam politely. It was the first thing he’d invited Sam to talk about all day. He’d gotten very engrossed in talking about his new book.

“Same old. Lots to do. You?”

“Mark, from corporate, has offered me a job as a translator for business meetings. He’s the one who heard me speaking all those languages,” he said as an aside to Eileen, who nodded knowingly. 

“That’s cool.”

“It’s a big pay rise, but it’s also a longer commute into the city. I might also have to go abroad on occasion.”

Dean nudged him with his elbow. “I keep telling him to go for it, but he’s stalling.”

“It would mean I hardly get to see you,” Cas said sadly. 

“You can work from home some days.”

“We’ve got until after the holidays to decide.”

His tone of voice implied that was the end of the discussion. 

“And you, Dean?” Sam said to fill the slightly awkward silence that was left. 

“Got a new waitress. Kailee. Most of our waitresses don’t last long. They’re all kids from the local high school. She’s only seventeen, but she’s a fast learner. Some nasty guy groped her, so I punched him. Felt good.”

Dean smiled at the memory of the pervert’s cheekbone cracking under his fist. One part of hunting that he missed was getting to use some dickwad’s face as a punching bag on a regular basis. 

“Does that happen a lot?” Sam sounded concerned. 

“Where we are, off the highway, we get a lot of truckers. You know the type. Big guys, tats, goatees. But most of them are harmless. Like, one of our regulars? Stu? Looks like your typical Hells Angel, but volunteers at a cat rescue in his free time. And Rusty? He runs a domestic violence support group. But you get the odd guy that crosses a line. I always tell the waitresses, if any guy makes them uncomfortable, they come and get me, and I’ll sort them out. Only happened a few times, but those guys never come back.”

“How noble of you,” Eileen drawled sarcastically. 

Sam turned to Jack. “And you, kid, good to finally see you. What were you up to upstairs?” 

“Yeah, you lose all your manners in California?” Dean criticized him through a mouthful of potatoes.

“I was playing that new game you got me! It’s really good, by the way. Thank you.”

“Oh, that horrible shooting game I told you not to get?” Cas looked disapprovingly at Dean.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those people that’s all ‘video games cause violence’?” he mocked. “‘Cause, spoiler alert, Cas, he’s already killed before. Hell, everyone at this table is a serial killer. Except for Harry, but he’s got time to work on that.”

“Okay!” Eileen interrupted. “If we could stop encouraging my son to commit murder before his first birthday, that would be great.”

“School, then,” Sam said in an attempt to get the conversation back to a safe topic. “How have you found your first semester?”

“Good so far. Classes are fun, and I hardly ever sleep so I have a lot of time to catch up on homework.”

“Very sensible,” Sam nodded. 

“Dean said I have to get a job soon because he doesn’t want to send me any more money.”

“Damn right, freeloader.”

Sam ignored him. “Are you doing anything fun though? College isn’t all work work work.”

“Oh yeah, the boys at Phi Kappa Psi are great fun.”

“What?” Dean dropped his fork on his plate with a loud clatter. He stared at Jack with his mouth open, despite the half-eaten food now in view. 

“I met them while I was in the supermarket buying beer and they asked me to join them.”

Jack seemed oblivious to the four concerned looks pointed at him. “We had this really fun party, and I had to do a handstand and drink beer from a tube, and now I have loads of new friends.”

Dean nearly choked on his food. “Kill me now. God’s in a frat.”

Cas, ever the sensible one, reached a consoling hand across the table. “Jack, are you sure they’re not just using you for alcohol because your ID says you’re twenty-one? We wouldn't want anyone taking advantage of you for that.”

“Oh, they give me stuff too,” Jack said, unconcerned. “Like these. I like these.”

Jack pulled a tightly rolled blunt from his jacket pocket. 

“Jack! That’s illegal!” Cas gasped like a good Southern lady clutching her pearls.

“Not in California. We ‘hashtag legalized it’.”

“Well, here it’s illegal. Give me that.”

Cas stood up to better reach across the table and take the blunt from Jack. 

“Oh, no way. I’m not letting you have that.” 

Dean snatched it out of Cas’s hand. “I’ve seen you stoned. It is not a pretty sight. You can’t be trusted with that.”

“When did Cas get high?” Eileen said, with a small gleam in her eye. 

“When Douche-ariah zapped me forwards into an alternative future. Sam was possessed by Lucifer, I was a jerk, and Cas was human and drowning himself in drugs and women.”

“Very alternative,” Sam muttered under his breath.

“Now you’re human again, you’re vulnerable to bad influences. I’m confiscating this for your own good,” Dean said firmly to Cas. 

“Can’t help but notice,” Sam said with a smile, “but you’re madder at an alternative Cas for smoking in a different future that now never existed, then you are for Jack actually smoking.”

“Yeah, well.” Dean shrugged and tucked the blunt into his top shirt pocket. “Gotta rebel a bit at his age.” 

“Five?”

*

After Miracle had eaten all the remaining scraps of turkey, it was time to open the rest of the presents. Sam pretended to be annoyed at Dean’s gift of a CD of Céline Dion’s Greatest Hits but Dean knew he secretly loved it. Cas got Eileen a couples’ pedicure voucher, but Sam wasn’t too keen, so Cas agreed to come along instead. Harry had received a load of new toys which made squeaky noises that Dean knew would irritate Sam but delight Eileen.

Jack started the evening helping Harrison set up his new toys and demonstrating how to use them, but by the end, he was mostly playing with them himself. Harry watched with rapt attention. It was hard to tell who was having more fun. 

When Eileen decided it was time for Harry’s bath, Jack grumbled and sulked off to his room to go fake-shoot something. 

“Hey Cas, I’m just going to take Miracle out for a walk around the lake,” Dean announced just after Sam left the room to use the bathroom and they were alone. 

Cas hummed a vague acknowledgment but didn’t look up from his book.

Dean opened the sliding back door and gestured for Miracle to follow him. Miracle had done this a hundred times before so knew the drill. It was only a short walk up the path to Dean's favorite fishing spot. 

“Okay boy, go take yourself for a walk.”

Miracle looked at him with a tilted head. 

“Shoo. Walkies.”

Miracle took a few steps down the path then looked back, confused as to why he wasn't following. 

“Go on. Or no treat.”

That did it. Miracle disappeared off down the path and round the corner. Dean wasn’t worried about him. He knew his way home and they didn’t get many tourists at this time of year, and the local residents didn’t tend to go out this late at night. 

Dean sat down on his bench and pulled the blunt and his lighter out of his pocket. He lit it and took a slow drag, then exhaled. 

“Wow. That’s actually not bad. Who knew Chad from the frat was growing the good stuff?”

He was about to take another drag when he heard footsteps coming up behind him. He quickly removed the blunt from his mouth and hid it behind his back, hoping the smoke trail wouldn’t be visible in the dark. 

“Shit. I thought you were Cas. What are you doing here?”

The look on Sam's face said he wasn’t fooled, so Dean stopped pretending to hide. “Well, I was going to join you for a walk. I could do with one after that meal. But I see that was a lie. Confiscating it for his own good, huh?”

“Oh, come on. It’s been years since I got stoned. And don’t you act all high and mighty. I know you’ve smoked before.”

“Once in college doesn’t count.”

“Everything you do in college counts. Or are you forgetting about what happened with the watermelon and the can of paint?”

Sam gave Dean another face. 

“Don’t look at me like that. You know, you’re way too pent up. Stressful job, new kid. You could do with this more than me.”

Dean offered the blunt to Sam. 

“Are you being serious? I’ve got a baby to look after!”

“A baby who has just gone to bed and sleeps through the night now, remember? You’ll be fine by morning. Come on. It’s actually quality stuff.”

Sam hesitated. “One hit.”

“That’s my boy!” Dean clapped him on the shoulder with one hand and handed over the joint with the other. 

“You’re a terrible influence. On Harry and me.”

Sam took a small breath in. 

“Not bad.”

“Right? Sit. Come look at the moon with me.”

The boys sat and stared in wonder at the moon and stars. It was a clear night and the moon was almost full. The air was crisp and cool, but there was no wind so the lake was perfectly still, other than a few ripples caused by fish. Sam took another, longer hit, and passed it back.

“Life’s good, isn’t it? You’ve got Cas, finally, I’ve got Eileen. Did you ever think life would be like this?”

Dean scoffed. “Never. For the longest time, I thought hunting was the only life I’d get. Thought it was the only one I wanted. Days on the road, you by my side. One monster after the other, each one bigger and badder than the last. But now? Now I wouldn’t go back to that life for anything.” Dean took another drag. 

“What, you don’t like me anymore?”

Dean blew the smoke into Sam’s face. 

“No, you’re a pain in my ass.”

Sam tried to waft the smoke away. “Oh don’t, you’ll make me stink.”

“You can change.”

His face dropped. “Oh shit. No, I can’t. This was my only other clean shirt. I changed when Harry threw up on me.”

Dean barely suppressed a giggle. 

“It’s not funny Dean, I’m having dinner with Eileen’s great-aunt tomorrow. She’s come all the way from Ireland to meet me and the baby and I’m going to turn up smelling like a stoner.”

Dean laughed harder. 

“Aww man, she’s probably expecting some hoity-toity lawyer dude to show up, but instead she’s getting fucking Snoop Dogg crashing her living room.”

Sam couldn’t stop a laugh from bubbling out of his chest. Then laughed harder. Within a minute, both boys were hysterical and gasping for breath. 

*

Eileen came back downstairs. “Ugh, Harry’s _finally_ asleep.” She looked around the room. “Where are Sam and Dean?”

Cas didn’t look up from his book. “At the lake. Pretending they’re not smoking weed.”

“Damn, it only took them five hours?”

Eileen handed Cas ten dollars, which he used as a bookmark, then set his book on the floor. 

“Thought it would be at least New Years’,” she grumbled. 

“That look on Dean’s face? I knew he wouldn’t wait.”

Eileen glanced out of the still-open sliding door. “Jeez, they’re not doing a very good job of hiding it, are they? I can smell them from here.”

“I can hear them, too. Dean just said ‘keep your voice down, Sammy. I don’t want Cas to know we’re smoking the good kush.’ I think Sam’s got used to being loud around you because you won’t tell him to shut up, and he forgets other people can hear him.”

“We have had a few noise complaints from the neighbors,” she pondered. “You know, it’s not fair they get to have all the fun. Next time you confiscate drugs from Jack, invite me over.”

Cas shook her hand. 

“Deal.”

A few minutes later, Cas heard footsteps coming back down the garden. _They’re coming. Pretend we didn’t notice,_ he signed quickly. 

Dean fully opened the patio door and Miracle came bounding in and ran to Cas. 

“Did you have a good walk, boy?” Cas scratched him on his sides. 

Dean followed him into the room. His eyes were a bit glassy, and he seemed to have trouble focusing. Sam was doing his best to hide behind his much shorter brother. He was even more out of it than Dean. 

“Walk? Oh yeah, great walk.”

“Great walk,” Sam repeated. 

Cas smirked. “You were quite a long time.”

“We uh, took a few laps. Really had to… walk off that food. I was super stuffed.”

“Super stuffed,” Sam agreed, and patted his stomach.

“Hey, speaking of, do we have any stuffing left?”

“In the fridge.”

“Good, I’m dead hungry.”

Cas bit the insides of his cheeks to keep from laughing. “You just said you were full?”

“Yeah, well, now I’m hungry. C'mon, Sammy. To the kitchen.”

“Kitchen.”

Sam and Dean headed out of the room. Sam had to hold the bottom of Dean’s shirt and let himself be pulled along. Eileen rolled her eyes at Cas.

“They’re children. Scrap that, worse than children. Harry’s going to be a much better liar when he grows up. He takes after me, you know.”

Cas scratched Miracle’s head. “Your father is lucky I love him.”

***

The wedding was a small affair. Most of Sam’s friends were dead, and most of Eileen’s believed she still was. Her great-aunt was the only member of her family that never got the news, due to her lack of internet connection. 

Sam and Dean stood at the front of the aisle at the registry office in their matching gray suits, dark blue ties, and accompanying pocket squares that Dean had complained about but Sam insisted were necessary. At least it wasn't a boutonnière.

“Still not getting cold feet?” Dean asked as he straightened his brother’s tie for the third time. 

“Nope,” Sam said with a smug smile. “One hundred percent sure.”

“Second time lucky, huh?”

Sam’s response was drowned out by the sound of the side door bursting open and a very flustered woman in a green knee-length dress bursting through. 

“Valerie. Glad you could make it,” Sam said wryly. 

“I’m not late, am I? You haven’t started yet?” She picked up a nearby magazine and started fanning herself with it. 

“Obviously not. Do you see a woman in white anywhere?”

“Woman in White? Where?” 

She flicked up the bottom of her dress to reveal a gun in a thigh holster. Sam frantically tried to cover it back up before Aunt Brigid noticed. A quick glance to the back of the room showed she was mentally criticizing the floral displays and had seen nothing. 

“Not the ghost, the bride!” he stage-whispered. 

“Whoops. My bad.”

She ran her fingers down her skirt to rub out the wrinkles she’d just put in it. “Anyways, who's this hot potato next to you?” she added with a nod in Dean’s direction. 

“Valerie, this is my brother, Dean. Dean, this is Valerie. An old hunting buddy of Eileen’s.”

Dean shook her hand. “Pleasure.”

“Oh, I’m sure we can arrange that. Best man, maid of honor, and all that. So, you got any plans once this shindig is over?”

She winked at him. 

Dean let go of her hand. “Yes, I’m going to go home with my boyfriend.” 

He jerked his head towards the front row, where Cas had heard every word and was just about resisting the urge to ball his hands into fists.

“Damn shame,” she said dejectedly. “All the hot guys are gay.”

“Bisexual,” he corrected reflexively. 

Her eyes lit up. “So I’m still in with a chance, then?”

Dean was spared having to break up an argument with Cas, who had just started to stand up with fury in his eyes, by the main doors opening at the back of the room. 

Cas sat back down but didn’t stop burning a hole in the back of Valerie’s head with his eyes, as Jack entered the room holding Harry’s hand. Jack was dressed maybe slightly too formally in his rented tuxedo and bow tie, and Harry was the dictionary definition of adorable in his little page boy suit and hair combed into a smart side parting. 

They walked down the aisle as quickly as Harry’s toddling legs would allow them, then sat down in the front row next to Cas. 

With both of Eileen’s parents dead, she had no one to walk her down the aisle, but she looked radiant in her white lace gown as she walked down the short gap in the chairs. She handed her bouquet off to Valerie so she could take Sam’s hands and beam a wide smile at him. 

*

The wedding ceremony flowed into the evening do without a hitch, thanks to Dean keeping Cas and Valerie occupied on opposite sides of the room. Cas had been tasked with escorting the very elderly Brigid to the venue. She had been delighted to have such a handsome young gentleman take her arm and she rested her hand slightly too low on his back for his liking as he led her to the car. 

Dean and Cas were taking a break from dancing when they caught sight of a familiar face. Claire and another girl about her age in a leather jacket were headed right towards them.

“Sup losers,” she said by way of greeting.

“Claire!” 

Cas, already half-drunk on a single glass of champagne, pulled her into a hug. “I thought you weren’t coming?”

“Yeah, well. I decided to gate-crash.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “You can’t crash a wedding you were invited to. You weren’t though. Who are you?”

The leather-jacketed girl startled at being addressed so abruptly. “I’m Maisie. Claire’s girlfriend.”

Dean frowned. “I thought—”

He got cut off by Cas elbowing him in the ribs and giving him a stern glare. 

“Lovely to meet you, Maisie. We’re Cas and Dean.”

Her eyes widened in recognition. “Oh right. Claire’s mentioned you. She’s so lucky, you know. Having two gays moms and two gay dads.”

“Jody and Donna aren’t together.”

“I’m not gay.”

“I am not your father.”

Claire, Dean, and Cas all spoke over each other. Maisie held up her hands defensively. 

“Whoa, I struck a nerve with that one. Apologies.”

“Don’t worry about Anti-Vader over there. He always says that," Claire placated. "Oh look, Sam’s over there. Jody asked me to give him this card. Let’s go.”

They crossed the room and greeted Sam, who also pulled her into a hug. 

Dean turned to Cas. “I thought Claire was dating Kaia?”

“No, they’re not together.” Cas regularly texted Claire to check in with her, so was aware of her latest relationship already. 

“We helped them move in together last year.”

“They’re just roommates.”

“They definitely had a thing, though. Even I could see it,” Dean argued. 

“Yes, I know, but sometimes it’s easier to see these things from the outside. Give her time.” He patted Dean on the shoulder sympathetically. “It took you twelve years.”

“You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

“Never.”

Dean was about to playfully punch Cas in the arm but he saw Aunt Brigid approaching them. 

“You’re the brother, yes?” she said with a thick Irish accent. 

“Uh, yes ma’am.”

“Ma’am, huh? I like you. You have more manners than your brother. Did you know he’s a drug addict?” she added bluntly. 

Dean fought down a smile and tried to say in his most forlorn voice, “Yes. Sam’s terrible habit has nearly torn our family apart several times. But I’ve been with him every step of the way, trying to get him clean and he’s really starting to turn his life around now.”

She looked impressed. “Why couldn’t my great-niece have married you? I worry for that poor little boy, you know. Having a wacky backy smoker for a father.”

Dean just about managed to turn his laugh into a cough. “I’m just glad Eileen has managed to find it in herself to love someone so flawed. Most of our family and friends have disowned him, but she saw past his many imperfections.”

“She has always had a loving heart. But the first sign he’s back on the drugs, I want him away from Harrison, do you understand me?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Very good. Now, is your handsome friend busy? No one has danced with me all evening.”

Dean turned his teasing attentions onto Cas. “Oh no. My _friend_ here is certainly available, aren’t you, Cas? Yeah? You kids have fun, now.”

Dean gave him a shove in her direction. He politely took her arm and led her to the dance floor just as the upbeat song that was playing ended and was replaced with a slow ballad. Brigid took the opportunity to wrap her arms around the small of Cas’s back and rest her head on his chest. 

Dean laughed at Cas’s startled expression and settled himself in his chair with a fresh glass of champagne. 

They spun in slow circles, the only ones on the dance floor. Cas stumbled and stood on her toes a few times, but she didn’t seem to mind. Her hands kept creeping further down his back and Dean cackled every time Cas moved them back up.

Cas shot Dean a look over the top of Brigid’s head that clearly read _I hate you_. Dean blew a kiss at him. 

Valerie noticed Dean was finally alone and started to cross the room, clearly with the intent of asking him to dance so he quickly tried to look busy. 

Jack was entertaining a very sleepy-looking Harrison a few tables over. 

“Hey, kid. Did you notice Claire’s here?”

Jack’s face lit up. “Claire’s here?” he repeated.

“Yeah, I just saw her head into the kitchen. Probably about to eat all the icing off the cake.”

“Cool!” He started to head towards the kitchen when he looked back at Harry. 

“I’ll watch him. You go have fun.”

Jack smiled and sprinted away. Dean instantly regretted his decision; Jack and Claire always brought out the worst in each other. Their meetups always ended up with at least one broken bone or federal law. Cas had nearly thrown a fit when he discovered the two of them on the roof of the house at two in the morning with a bottle of whiskey last time she stayed over. 

He picked up the sleepy toddler and let Harry rest his head on his shoulder. It didn’t take much rocking for Harry to fall asleep, despite the noise of music and dancing in the room. 

Three songs later, Cas finally managed to extract himself from Brigid’s surprisingly tight grip and returned to Dean with a murderous glint in his eyes. 

“You’re going to have to hold off the tongue-lashing, babe. Sleeping baby, here.” Dean said, not the slightest bit worried. 

“You are the absolute worst,” Cas said with as much venom as he could fit in a whisper. 

“And yet, you still love me.”

Cas sighed. “Tragically, yes.”

Cas looked around the room. Sam and Eileen were half-heartedly dancing, more like swaying back and forth, on the dance floor, their arms around each other’s waists. Alma and Valerie had both turned their attentions on the only remaining man in the room: the twenty-something acne-ridden DJ who looked in desperate need of an escape route. Maisie was headed across the dance floor towards the bathroom. Cas couldn't help but note some significant absences. 

“Where are Claire and Jack?”

“In the kitchen, probably.”

“Alone?”

“This isn’t a fucking Jane Austen novel, Cas. They don’t need a chaperone.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about.”

The sound of a large splat made Cas turn his head towards the kitchen. 

“That is,” he finished, displeasure lacing his voice. 

Dean delicately put Harry down so he was curled up on the seat and the two of them raced to the kitchen and found Claire and Jack with a ruined cake at their feet. Even the copious amounts of icing on their faces couldn’t hide the guilty expressions underneath.

“Christ! Frigging teenagers! Can’t leave you alone for two goddamn minutes!”

“Neither of us is a teenager, Old Man Jenkins,” Claire said with as much snark as someone with blue frosting in their eyebrow could manage. 

Dean was taken aback. “Well, your ages average out. What the hell are you going to do about this? You need to clean this up before Sam sees!”

“Before Sam sees what?”

The four of them span around at the sound of Sam’s voice. They all stood tightly together like sardines in an invisible container to block the wreckage from Sam’s view. 

“Nothing!” they said in unison. 

Sam wasn’t fooled. “Seriously, guys. What’s going on?”

He tried to lean around to see behind them. They shuffled to the side in sync. 

Sam huffed. “No really, what are you doing?”

Dean thought fast. “We’re just, uh, putting some finishing touches on the cake. Little gift for you and the missus. Run along now, you don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

“You know I don’t believe you for a second.”

Sam reached for Jack who was furthest to the left. Despite his all-powerful God abilities, he was actually very easy to over-power once you knew all his ticklish spots. With a pinch to his waist, Jack broke rank and let Sam past. 

There was the faint sound of fingers snapping. 

“Huh,” was all Sam had to say. 

Dean and the others turned to face the counter. In the middle was the cake, fully restored to its former glory, with no icing missing, and not a flower out of place. The only difference was the addition of a wedding topper of a tall man with long hair and a much shorter woman, wearing clothing identical to what Sam and Eileen had on. 

“See? What did I tell you? You need to work on your trust issues, you’re a married man now. Now get back out there and try to look impressed when we bring this over.”

Sam apologized and headed back to Eileen before she started to question his absence. 

They collectively let out a sigh of relief. 

“That was close.” Claire put a hand over her chest. “Yikes, my heart’s beating faster than that time a werewolf cornered me down an alleyway.”

“Uh, you're welcome, by the way,” Jack said to break the silence that followed. “I just saved all your asses.”

“You’re the reason our asses were on the line in the first place!” Dean pointed out, exasperated. 

“Jack, I do wish you’d stop using your powers to solve mundane problems," Cas admonished.

“With great power comes great responsibility, Mr. Potter,” Dean said in a poor imitation of Yoda's voice.

Claire almost died inside. “That is incorrect on so many levels.” 

“You didn’t seem to mind me using my powers to remove that tomato sauce stain from your favorite shirt,” Jack pointed out.

Cas stammered and tried to defend himself. “Well, that’s different.”

“Oh yeah, how so?” Dean scoffed.

He looked down at his shoes. “I really liked that shirt.” 

Dean chuckled at his sorry little face. “C'mon, let’s get this cake out to the newlyweds.”

They all grabbed a side of the cake board and carried it out to the dancefloor, careful not to drop it a second time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recreational drug use


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in the end notes

Cas was getting dressed in the bedroom when he heard a scream. He ran into the bathroom, his anti-possession and angel warding tattoos visible on his bare chest, slipper in hand. “What is it? Where’s the danger?”

“Look at this, Cas!”

Dean aggressively poked at his temple. 

Cas squinted at where his finger was pointing. “Your hair?”

“My _gray_ hair! I’m going gray!”

“Oh, is that all?”

“ _‘Is that all?’_ This is a big deal, Cas! My first gray hair.”

“It’s not your first. You have more at the back.”

“What!” Dean frantically whipped his head around trying to see in the bathroom mirror. 

“You’re forty-five Dean. It’s only natural,” Cas said, level-headedly. 

“Forty-three,” Dean muttered under his breath. 

“When your hairline starts receding, don’t scream bloody murder. I thought a demon was attacking you.”

“And you were going to smite them with your slipper?”

Cas admired the aforementioned slipper. "I've found it to be very useful in smiting spiders."

***

“Hey babe, how was your first day?”

Cas let himself into the house and sat down on the couch. Miracle immediately jumped onto his lap and Cas started absentmindedly patting his head. 

“I think it went well. I already prefer book translation to translating business meetings.”

“That’s good. I know you were getting sick of corporate fat cats and their money exploiting schemes. Are your co-workers nice?”

“Yes. There’s only three of them; Sandra, Debbie, and Julia. They were all very helpful in getting me settled. Kept asking if I needed anything, making me coffee.”

“How kind.”

“They seem friendly.”

“As long as they don’t get as friendly as Linda from HR at your old place. How many times did she invite you out for dinner?”

“Four. She seemed to be under the impression I was a widowed single father. I think she was just looking for a rebound after her divorce.”

“And also you’re hot shit.”

“If you say so.”

Dean pushed Miracle onto the floor so he could curl up next to Cas instead and ran a hand up his thigh.

“I do say so. You’re a middle-aged woman’s wet dream. Cute as hell, good with kids, you give off a dorky, non-threatening vibe in your little sweater vests.”

He lightly tugged on the material. Dean had bought him it as a joke a few months ago, but Cas seemed to genuinely love it. He had bought three others since.

“Is that why you like me?”

“Hell no. I like you for the exact opposite reason. I know you can and will beat me into a pulp, and, not gonna lie, that turns me on a whole lot.”

“You are a strange man, Dean Winchester.”

***

Dean let himself into the house late in the evening, with a thoughtful expression on his face. 

“Dean? You're usually home from work earlier than this. Did something happen?”

Dean could smell his dinner from where Cas was keeping it warm in the oven for him.

“Nothing bad. Don asked to talk to me after my shift. You know how he's been talking about retiring? Well, he’s just told me he wants _me_ to buy the dinner from him. Says he couldn’t stand seeing it going to anyone else.”

Cas sat with him on the couch. “What about Diego? He’s been there longer than you?”

“That’s what I said! But he said Diego is ‘not management material’, whatever that means.”

“Huh. It’s a big commitment.”

“And expensive. Can we afford to buy a diner?”

“Maybe. My new job pays very well.”

Apparently, there weren't many people who were willing to translate Young Adult literature into Gujarati. 

“We’ll think about it. It’s a while until Don retires.”

***

“Isn’t Jack supposed to be here by now?” Cas complained. 

Dean and Cas were sitting at their dining room table, a succulent slow-cooked beef joint in front of them, which Dean had been dying to tuck into it for hours, but Cas insisted he wait until the whole family was assembled. Miracle sat on the floor at the head of the table, his eyes fixed on the beef, and his tongue salivating in anticipation. 

“It’s the hottest day of the year so far. He’s probably off partying with a bunch of co-eds on a beach somewhere. You think he wants to visit some old men? We should just start without him.” 

Dean picked up his carving fork and knife and started slicing the meat into thick circles. 

“It’s Father’s Day. We’re his fathers.”

“And so deeply uncool compared to a bunch of hot chicks in bikinis.”

Dean dished up the beef onto his and Cas’s plates, then added some to the one in front of Jack’s empty chair. 

“I’m calling him.” Cas addressed the ceiling and ignored his food, unlike Dean, who had started to eat his lunch so fast he was almost inhaling it. “Jack? Are you coming?”

Jack appeared with a small whoosh across the dining room floor. He had about three days worth of stubble, unwashed hair, was wearing a Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned to reveal a very deep tan, pink knee-length shorts, mismatched flip flops, and a pair of sunglasses that they’d never seen before. 

The sight of Jack in the most unkempt state they’d ever seen him in was enough to make even Dean stop chewing for a second. But only a second. _Eh, that’s college life,_ he thought, as he reached for the potatoes. 

Miracle, who was long since used to Jack appearing out of thin air, rushed to his side and jumped at his legs. Jack half-heartedly lent down to stroke him. 

“Is it lunch already? Sorry, I was sunbathing. Lost track of time.”

“It’s okay. You’re here now.”

Cas took two potatoes of Dean’s mountain of a plate and added them to Jack’s, then took the ones remaining in the bowl for himself. 

“Hey!” Dean picked up a pea from his plate and used his fork to catapult it into Cas’s forehead. It bounced off and rolled onto the floor, where it was quickly scavenged by a hungry Miracle. 

Cas heaved a long-suffering sigh and mentally wished his angel blade was in his sleeve, not in his trench coat pocket on the hook by the front door. 

Dean turned back to Jack. “Lunch is getting cold. Get over here. And button your damn shirt at the table. This is a respectable fucking household.”

Jack did as he was told. He sat down in his usual spot and added the final touches of gravy onto his plate. He was about to start eating when he caught a glare from Cas out of the corner of his eye. Reluctantly, he added a scoop of peas to the mix, then used his powers to turn off his taste buds so he couldn’t taste the little green balls of evil.

“So what’s new with you, kid?” Dean asked once Jack had finished his peas and activated his taste buds again. 

“Aced that essay.”

“The one that was worth 60% of this semester's grade?” Cas inquired.

“That’s the one.”

“Well done.” Cas smiled proudly at him. 

“Uh. Ooh, I got a pay rise at my job. I now make an extra five cents an hour.”

“Very generous,” Dean scoffed. 

“The drunk guy who always pees on our mailbox has started peeing on our neighbor’s instead.”

“That’s something I guess.”

“I had sex for the first time.”

Dean choked on his food. “You did what?”

“Had sex. I see why you like it so much. It’s very fun.” Jack skewered a potato on his knife and popped it into his mouth whole. 

Dean spluttered. “Wh— No— Yo— You can’t do that!”

“Why not?” Jack asked, the picture of innocence. 

“Because you’re seven!”

“Is that too young?” Jack tilted his head. 

_“Is that too—”_

Dean was already picturing the blood pressure medication his doctor would prescribe him at his next check-up. He was sure he could feel more hair turning gray by the second. “Cas, tell him.”

“Well…” Cas started hesitantly. 

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re okay with this?”

What was wrong with everybody today?

“It’s not exactly the worst thing he’s done,” Cas defended. 

Jack tried to interject. “I told you, I thought they were Smarties. I didn’t know what they’d—”

Dean held a hand over his mouth. “You, butt out. The adults are talking.”

“So he’s old enough to be God, but sex is too much?” Cas said irately. 

“Yes. Glad we’re on the same page. There are laws in place for a reason.”

Cas scoffed. “When have you ever followed the law?”

“Hey, that’s all in the past. I’m a tax-paying, law-abiding citizen now. I drive at the speed limit, never park in front of fire hydrants, hell, I even voted in the last election.”

“Under a false name and date of birth. You committed voter fraud, is what you did.”

“For democracy,” Dean added righteously. 

Jack wriggled himself free of Dean’s grip. “You let me smoke weed as long as I don’t do it in the house.”

“That’s different. Besides, this is an age-restricted law.”

“You gave me my first drink when I was three days old!”

“Also different.”

“Dean, you are making no sense.”

“Look, Cas, I’m a complex man with complex morals. I gotta draw the line somewhere, alright? Now, tell me their name.”

Dean turned to Jack and dealt him a stern expression. He knew he was giving off the vibe of a parent in a coming of age comedy who had stayed up late to catch their teenager sneaking in, but he didn’t care. 

“Why do you want to know their names?”

“So I know who to shoot. Wait—” Dean did a double-take. “ _Names?_ Plural? How many people have you slept with?”

“Fourteen.”

Oh yeah, there was that heart attack now.

“Fourteen. Fourteen people since we last saw you. Two months ago. I’m gonna be sick.”

Even Cas didn’t take this news well. He wrinkled his face in disgust. 

“Did you at least use a condom? Do you even know what they are? Oh god, Cas, we haven’t even given him The Talk yet.”

“Oh, Sam told me everything before I went to college. I know why condoms are important. He told me what happened with the watermelon.”

“Wow, he did tell you everything.”

*

After Dean had calmed down somewhat, Jack had left to go and see Sam. He and Eileen hadn’t been on a date for a while and had managed to convince Jack to be a free babysitter under the guise of getting to hang out with Harry for the evening. Jack had been ecstatic. 

Dean spat out his toothpaste like an angry cowboy spitting tobacco at the feet of a rival. “I still can’t believe him. This is all Chad from the frat’s fault.”

“Who’s Chad?”

”All frat boys are called Chad.”

Cas walked up behind him and hugged him around the waist. Dean let himself be pinned up against the sink as he rinsed his toothbrush. “Dean, don’t be too hard on him. You used to be just like that.”

“Oh, screw you. You’re just mad that he has a higher body count than you.”

Cas squinted his eyes. “I’ve killed thousands more than he has. And I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

He shook his head, dismissively. “Never mind. You’re right, though. What happened to me? I used to have sex, like, every night. Now look at me!”

Dean gestured to his torn pajama bottoms that he couldn’t be bothered to replace. He grabbed a handful of skin on his hip that was hanging over the waistband and jiggled it. “I’m utterly unfuckable.”

Cas kissed him from his shoulder up his neck to the corner of his jaw, then licked and sucked at the spot. “I'd have to disagree with that. I'd sleep with you right now if you wanted to.”

Dean turned around and placed a light kiss on Cas’s lips, then lightly pushed him away so he could walk to the bedroom. Cas heard his voice through the wall say, “Nah, not right now, babe, I’m not in the mood,” then there was a groan and a muffled _thwap_. 

Cas followed him into the bedroom. He found Dean lying face down across the bed with his feet dangling off the end. 

“What’s wrong?”

Dean turned his face to the side just far enough to have heard clearly. “I just turned down sex. With _you_. What’s happened to me? I’m getting old.”

He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. 

“You’re not old.”

“I am! First the gray hair, now the not wanting sex. And it’s not just that! My knees hurt when I stand up, I have to keep a support pillow in the Impala for my back, I’ve just become a business owner and—” 

His voice choked. 

“—I think I need reading glasses. I have to squint at everything now. I hold my phone at arm's length like someone’s grandma. Hold me, Cas.”

Cas sighed at his antics, but nonetheless manhandled Dean so his head was on the pillow then got into the bed, too. Dean immediately snuggled up to his chest. 

“This is what we wanted, remember? To grow old together?”

“I didn’t think it would happen so soon, though. Why does it all feel like it’s hitting me at once?”

Cas stroked a hand through his hair, careful to avoid the graying ones at his temple he knew Dean was self-conscious of. “I was healing you for years. Not just your injuries, all of you. It’s all catching up to you, now.”

Dean pulled out of his grip to look him full in the face. “So this is your fault!”

“It would have happened earlier if not for me. I did you a favor.” 

He resumed his stroking and said softly, “I’m aging too, you know. There are wrinkles on my face that weren’t there a year ago. My wrist hurts when I type. And I think I might need glasses, too. Looking at a screen all day is giving me headaches.”

Dean smirked. “Bet you’d look sexy in glasses. I’d look stupid. You won’t love me anymore.”

He put on a fake pout that Cas couldn’t resist kissing. 

“I’ll always love you. Even with glasses. Even with your gray hair. Even though you fart in your sleep.”

“I fart in my sleep?!”

“Oh, I should not have told you that.”

***

Dean's phone rang as he and Cas were eating dinner, blissfully interrupting a very dull story Cas was telling him about a shipment of 15th-century German poetry he’d received to translate earlier that day. 

He smiled at the caller ID and put the phone to his ear. “Charlie! Good to hear from you!”

“Hey Deano. How’s domestic bliss?”

“Loving every second. How’re you? Staying in trouble?”

“Obviously. Sorry I missed the wedding. I kind of had the police tracking my movements and I didn’t want to lead them to you.”

“Shit. What did you do?”

“I’ve been hacking into Amazon a bunch. Donating their money to charities and such. If they won’t pay their taxes, I’ll pay it for them.”

“That’s my girl. So why the call? You need something?”

“Now I’ve got the Five-O off my back, I’m back to my old ways. I’m going to be in your area next week, hand-delivering some care packages to the poor and needy, courtesy of our dear pal, Jeff. Was wondering if you wanted to meet up. I could do with a night of drinking.”

“Absolutely. Should we invite Sam?”

“I asked him first. He’s got to watch Harrison.”

“Boring.” He lent away from the phone. “Hey, Cas, you want to go out to a bar with Charlie?”

Cas made a face, his eyes haunted with the recollection of his last time he went out with Dean. “I’m not drinking anymore after last time. I got way too drunk.”

“You had two beers.”

“And then I tried to order another from a mannequin for twenty minutes.”

Dean chuckled at the memory of an increasingly frustrated Cas yelling at a cowboy statue behind the bar and insulting it when it didn’t take his order. 

He put the phone back to his ear. 

“Looks like it’s just you and me, then. Where do you want to go?”

“I looked some places up and it looks like there’s a bar called The Saloon not far from you. Have you ever been?”

Dean searched through his brain but came up blank. There weren’t many bars near him he hadn’t been to yet. It must be one of those new builds. “No, never heard of it.”

“Great! First time for us both, then.”

“Sounds good. I’ll see you next week, Charles.”

“See you.”

Dean hung up. He put his phone back in his pocket and carried on with his dinner as if he’d never been interrupted. 

Cas put down his cutlery, and gave Dean a look he'd come to realize meant he was about to get a lecture. “You don’t have to go on a bender to prove you’re still young, Dean.”

“What? That’s not what this is. I’m just meeting up with an old friend.”

“So you’re not going to drink far too much and get blackout drunk, then?”

“No!”

“You’re going to be home by midnight?”

He shrugged. “Maybe one am.”

Cas squinted his eyes. “Fine. If you’re not home by then I’m coming to get you.”

*

On Saturday, Dean met Charlie at the address she gave him. He looked out the cab window at the building in front of him, and then back at his phone. Definitely the right place. He paid the driver then got out, and immediately regretted that decision as he watched the car drive away and leave him stranded.

The bar was down a dingy back alley, which wasn’t his cause for concern; most of the bars he went to were. What made him pause was that the bar was actually incredibly well-lit for its location due to the neon lights covering the front. Above the door were a series of flags, the first being a rainbow-striped flag, and the rest were patterned with colors in arrangements he didn’t recognize. 

His eyes scanned the personnel. Charlie had texted to say she was here, but all he could see was a man in incredible tight leather pants and no shirt talking to a drag queen wearing an elaborate purple wig and silver sequin dress. 

He was looking down at his phone to call her, so he didn’t see her walk up to him and clap him on the shoulder. He nearly dropped his phone in a puddle that he hoped to god was rainwater. 

“Charlie! This is a gay bar!” Dean gasped. 

Charlie was dressed to the nines in a tight black dress and strappy red heels. He’d never seen her, or his world’s version of her, quite like this. 

“Uh, yeah? Where else would two old queers go out drinking?”

“I’ve never—” he gestured vaguely at the bar. 

She rolled her heavily made-up eyes at him. “You came out years ago and you’ve never been to a gay bar?

“No! Aren’t gay bars for, like, hooking up? I’m already in a relationship.”

“They’re also for making friends. And having fun. C’mon. No chickening out now.”

She grabbed him by the arm and dragged him with surprising speed, given her footwear, towards the door. 

A very large and intimidating bouncer with a diamanté studded earpiece held up a hand to stop them. 

“IDs please, ladies,” she demanded in an unexpectedly low voice.

Charlie conjured what Dean was sure was a fake driver's license from somewhere near the top of her dress and handed it over. He couldn’t work out where she’d been stashing that. There were no pockets on that tiny dress and she had no purse with her. 

The bouncer looked between the real Charlie and the photographic one a few times, before grunting an approval and giving the license back. 

Dean got his wallet out of his back pocket, secretly thrilled to have been asked. It had been a long time. He stepped forward and held his ID up to her face. 

The bouncer looked at him more intensely now he was closer. She ignored the license and scanned her eyes across his face, from his crow's feet over to his graying temples. 

“Yeah, you’re good,” she snorted and held the door open for them. 

Charlie skipped inside. Dean grumbled his annoyance to himself as he put his wallet away and followed her. 

The inside wasn’t quite what he was expecting; it looked like a regular nightclub, not that he’d been to too many of those. Dive bars were more his thing. It was nearly identical to his favorite bar downtown except for the rainbow patterned accessories scattered around the place. Nothing too major, just a rainbow straw here or there and the seven stools at the bar that were each a different color. 

Dean bypassed the dance floor and went straight to the bar. He sat down on the green chair and flagged down the bartender to order a double bourbon. Charlie sat next to him on the blue chair and requested an elaborate cocktail with a cherry and a silver glittery embellishment. 

“So, how’s Stevie?” 

Thankfully, the back of the room with the bar was much quieter than the dance floor so he could actually hear himself speak.

Charlie’s eyes lit up. “She’s so good. She’s literally the cutest. She made me breakfast in bed the other day. Just because! I love her so much!”

“She sounds great,” Dean added fondly, and took a sip of his drink. 

“She is. She’s so great. I’m in super big gay love with her. I’m going to take her to Paris soon. One day. When I can sneak past customs.”

“Wow, really?”

“Shh, don’t tell her. I want it to be a surprise.”

“Okay, I won’t.” 

Dean smiled. He had a sneaking suspicion Charlie had started drinking long before getting here. 

“Summer of love, baby. Speaking of, how are things with my second favorite couple?”

"Good. We're not allowed back to the Neighborhood Watch, though," he said with a chuckle.

"Why?"

"Cas watched the neighbors too closely and told everyone who was having affairs with who. He ended three marriages in one evening."

“Oh yeah, he's a keeper. Another drink?”

Dean got the bartender’s attention. “Same again, please.”

“Psssh.” Charlie slapped the back of his hand. “You’re at a gay bar. Order something fun!”

Dean smiled. He liked Charlie like this. Free from the tensions of Apocalypse World, letting loose. She had a spark in her eyes that he hadn’t seen in a long time, and for a second, it was almost like his old friend had never died. 

“Fine. I’ll have one of... whatever she had.”

Charlie slapped both her hands down on the counter, rattling the empty glasses. “Yes! One for me, too, please.”

Dean reached for his wallet to pay, but Charlie pushed his hands away. 

“These are on me. Or, more accurately,” she leaned closer so only he could hear, “they’re on Mr. Bezos.”

She pulled more money from the aether and handed it over the counter. Seriously, how was she doing that?

The bartender handed them their drinks, which they clinked together in celebration. Dean took a hesitant sip.

“Hmm. It’s actually not bad.”

“Damn straight.”

“I thought we were queer?” Dean added with a smirk. 

“Now you’re getting the hang of this, Winchester! Ooh, I love this song! Come dance with me!”

Dean barely had time to grab his drink before Charlie was taking his hand and dragging him to the dance floor. 

The drag queen he’d seen outside earlier was already on the floor, dancing with a different man than the one Dean had seen with him before. He watched as he took a feather boa from around his neck and pretended to lasso the other man, pulling them closer until they were grinding their hips together. 

Dean started to lose himself in the music, some modern pop song he’d heard on the radio a few times but didn’t know the name of. Charlie took his hands and tried to let him spin under her arms, but she was too small even with her heels, and she just ended up batting him in the face and losing her balance. He caught her before she fell and they shared an uncomfortable moment when they realized Dean had caught her in a dip. 

Dean quickly pulled her back to her feet. 

“Sorry, didn’t mean to get romantic on you. I usually save that move for Cas on Valentine’s Day.”

She winked faux-flirtatiously at him. “I get it. I’m irresistible to the ladies and the fellas. At least you bought me a drink first.”

“You bought my drink,” Dean pointed out. 

“That’s because I’m a forward-thinking modern woman. Do you want another one?”

“Please,” Dean said eagerly. Anything to wash away the awkwardness. 

The evening started to get hazy somewhere around Dean’s fourth cocktail. It all became a blur of feathers, glitter, and dancing until it all went black. 

*

_Bang._

_Bang._

_Bang._

Dean woke to a pounding in his head. He tried to pull the pillow out from under his head to cover his ears, but it did nothing to help. Wait. He didn’t recognize that pillow. 

He opened his eyes and looked around. The room was dark, which was good for his poor, hungover eyes, but bad for assessing his surroundings. 

The room was simply but sophisticatedly decorated, mostly in a chic glossy white, but with a few color accents, and was, most importantly, a living room. The second mercy he was granted was that a quick look down told him he was still fully dressed in the same clothes from the night before. 

A weak groan caused his attention to drift. On another couch, perpendicular to his own, was Charlie, looking as terrible as he imagined he did. She was missing a shoe, her hair was splayed all over the armrest, and she had a feather boa he had a vague memory of wrapped around her neck. 

“Ugh, make it stop,” she grumbled, as she spat an errant feather out of her mouth. 

Charlie could hear the banging too? Either they were having a shared hangover, or the noise wasn’t coming from inside his head. 

They both turned to the arrival of a new sound. Footsteps. It took a few moments for Dean to place the owner, but through his brain fog, he recognized the drag queen from the night before, now without the wig and makeup, but still in the tight sequin dress. 

He emerged from his bedroom, and walked to the front door, seemingly unphased by the two drunks in his house, and opened the front door. 

“Well, golly gosh. What a handsome gentleman caller at my door so early in the morning! What can I do for you, sugar?” 

He leaned seductively against the door frame. 

“Is Dean here?”

Oh no. Dean knew that voice. That was Cas’s angry voice. He was so dead. 

The drag queen sighed disappointedly and called back into the living room. “Hey, is your name Dean?”

Dean didn’t have time to say anything before Cas shoved his way in and stormed over to Dean. 

“What the fuck are you playing at?!”

This definitely wasn’t good. Cas only swore for two reasons: if he was incredibly turned on, or if Dean was in big trouble. He had a feeling it was the latter this time. 

“How did you find me?”

“Sam taught me how to put a tracker on your phone. Oh, don’t you look at me like that. I knew this would happen. You don’t have to prove you’re still young and ‘hip’ by drinking yourself into a gutter.”

“Cute and protective. Why are all the good men taken?” the drag queen mused to himself. 

“You said you’d be home by one. It is eight am. Do you know how worried I’ve been? Anything could have happened to you!”

“I was texting you updates all evening!”

Dean palmed his jean pockets for his phone. He wasn’t expecting it to turn on, but it did, displaying a measly 3% battery and twenty missed calls and seventeen texts from Cas, as well as an email from Papa John’s about a new voucher for half off delivery, this week only. 

“Oh, you mean your increasingly incoherent messages, the last of which read, ‘I gay. Yay Taylor Swift’?”

His mind suddenly swam with the hazy memory of him and Charlie dancing to the artist's latest single, which he liked more than he’d ever admit. “Is that what I wrote? Charlie, what was in those drinks last night?”

Charlie had just about forced herself into a seated position but was still swaying slightly. “Ugh, about five different alcohols.”

“But they tasted like juice!” he protested.

“That would explain the text, ‘fruity drink fuck me up’.”

Years of Pavlovian conditioning had taught him that words like that coming from Cas’s mouth meant he was about to get laid. Damn it, now was not the time to get aroused. 

“Yeah, those things are lethal. My head feels like it’s going to explode.”

Cas turned to her and acknowledged her presence for the first time. 

“Charlie, would you like a lift back to your motel?” he asked in a much more sympathetic voice than the one he used on Dean. 

“Yes, please,” she grunted, and attempted to stand, but stumbled slightly due to her unlevel footwear. 

Cas found her discarded shoe and held it in place for her to put her foot into, then buckled it. He held out an arm for her to balance herself on. 

“You. Get up,” he said harshly at Dean. 

He clambered to his feet and patted his pockets. Wallet and keys in place, he headed for the door. 

Cas held his free hand out for the drag queen to shake.

“Thank you for looking after them. It’s been nice to meet you..?”

He took his hand as flirtatiously as was possible for a handshake. “Miss Veloir. But Craig to you, honey. You know where I am if you ever decide to ditch this one.” 

Dean shot him a death glare as he followed Cas out the door. 

He squinted at the bright morning light. Through his eyelashes, he could see the neon lights of the bar across the street. He hadn’t gone far then. The second thing he noticed was the Impala parked a few buildings down. 

“You took my car?”

“I wasn’t sure if you’d be conscious when I got to whatever gutter you found yourself in, so I needed space to throw your lifeless corpse.”

“Smart.” Dean didn’t have enough energy to waste on shouting at Cas for his theft. 

Cas opened the passenger door and gently escorted Charlie to her seat then held open the rear door. 

“Get in.”

Dean’s stumbling was obviously too slow for Cas’s liking because he grabbed Dean by the collar and chucked him across the backseat.

He stared down at him pensively. 

“You know, for years, I’ve dreamed of throwing you back here. Never thought it would be like this.”

Damn him for saying sexy things when Dean was still mad at him. 

“Oh, we are so tabling this discussion for another day, but right now—”

Dean rested his head on his arms then promptly passed out again. 

Cas got into the front seat and turned the car on. The loud roar of the engine startled Dean back to consciousness. 

“Thanks for this, Cas,” Charlie said as she buckled her seat belt. “I hope I don’t throw up.” 

“Another reason I brought Dean's car,” Cas said with a glint of satisfaction. 

Dean had just enough energy to flip him off from the backseat. 

After dropping a very tired Charlie back to her motel and half carrying her into bed, Cas drove them both back home. Dean swore he hit every pothole, rounded every corner too sharply, and braked too hard to stop him from falling asleep again, but Cas insisted innocently that he just wasn’t used to driving this car. 

Jack opened the door when he heard the car pull up and helped Cas get Dean out of the back seat. Dean was only semi-conscious when he was dragged into the house. 

“What’s Jack doing here?” he slurred as he was unceremoniously dumped on the couch. 

“He could hear me worrying all the way from California,” Cas yelled from the kitchen he’d disappeared into. 

Jack plumped a cushion for Dean to rest his head on. “I told him you were alright, but he didn’t believe me.”

“Very loose definition of ‘alright’. I feel like hot sewage. But it’s a good thing you’re here, kid. C’mon, get healing.”

Dean slapped his open palm to his head then immediately regretted that move as pain radiated through his skull. 

“Uh, Cas says I’m not allowed to.”

“What? Why?”

“Because, and I quote, ‘That dumb son of a bitch deserves everything he gets’.”

“Bastard,” he snarled through gritted teeth. 

Cas returned from the kitchen and chucked a small plastic bottle into Dean’s lap. “You can have these, though, and you’ll be grateful.”

He handed Dean a glass of water to wash down the aspirin. 

Dean eagerly poured two pills onto his hand and popped them into his mouth. “I guess you have some redeeming qualities. Jack, make yourself useful. Go get my coffee.”

Jack plodded off to the kitchen and Dean had never been so pleased to hear the sound of the coffee pot whirring in his life.

Cas opened the curtains, flooding the room with light. Dean threw an arm over his eyes. 

“I've changed my mind. You're clearly a demon sent to torture me for all eternity.”

“I’m the one being tortured. Eight billion humans on this planet I could have fallen in love with and I chose _you?_ I guess this is my punishment for rebelling against heaven. Have I not suffered enough, yet?”

Cas addressed the question to the ceiling as if God was listening from heaven and not the kitchen. 

“Oh, screw you, Cas.”

“Oh no, you don’t get to do that. You’d better get used to that couch, ‘cause that’s where you’re sleeping this week. I’m going to bed. Alone. I haven’t slept all night because of you.”

Dean had just finished the water when Jack came back in with the coffee. Cas nearly bumped into him when they both tried to fit through the doorway at the same time. 

“Ah, Jack, just in time. You should know, I’m divorcing your father.”

Dean shouted the last bit loud enough for Cas to hear over his footsteps stomping up the stairs.

Jack looked worried. “But, you’re not married!”

“It’s the principle of the thing, kid.”

“So you’re not actually breaking up?”

Dean sighed. “No, kid. He’s stuck with me, I’m afraid. Now bring that coffee over here.”

“I made it strong for you.”

“Mmm, you’re my new favorite person, even if you won’t heal me.” Dean took a deep gulp and could swear he felt the humanity returning to his body. “Do you get like this after your nights out?”

“No, I don’t get hangovers.”

Dean stared at him with disbelief. 

“You can rot in hell, too. Get out. Close the curtains before you go.”

Jack did so. Dean stayed on the sofa and nursed his coffee, waiting for the pills to kick in. After what felt like about an hour he heard banging again. 

He wasn’t sure he’d be able to get up without passing out again, but no one else was heading towards the door. 

“Can someone get that?” he yelled to the house and covered his ears. He could just about hear Cas’s thundering footsteps walking to the door. 

“You’re right next to the door, but sure, I’ll get out of bed to get the door for you. Lazy asshole.”

“Just make them shut up.”

Cas yanked the door open, ready to curse out whoever was on the other side, but the woman approaching middle age in a sensible skirt made him pause. “Uh, can I help you?”

“Is Dean here?” she asked eagerly. 

“Why does everyone keep asking that?” Dean muttered to himself. “Wait, I know that voice.”

Dean stumbled groggily to the door. Someone he hoped he would never see again was standing there. 

“Becky?”

“Oh my god! Dean!” She squealed and pulled him in for an organ-squeezing hug. 

“Woah, tone it down. My skull is about to explode.”

“Dean, who is this person?” Cas asked, his displeasure evident in every syllable. 

“Becky. Sam’s ex-wife,” Dean added pointedly once she released him. 

“Ah, the one that drugged him.” Cas nodded knowingly. Dean had had way too much fun recounting the story to him a few years ago while Sam cringed in the corner. 

“Yeah, sorry about that. I’ve changed now, I swear! And who are you?”

“Apologies, Dean is terrible at introductions. I’m Cas.”

“Wait, Castiel? The angel? Aren’t you supposed to be wearing a trench coat?”

She looked quizzically at his jeans and t-shirt he’d been too tired to change out of before going to sleep.

“Not anymore. Why are you here? How did you find us?”

Cas motioned to let her in. 

“Great, just what we need right now,” Dean groaned. 

Becky came in just as Jack was walking down the stairs. He’d finally heard the conversation at the door through his headphones. 

“And who’s this?” Becky asked. 

Jack raised his hand in a wave. 

“I’m Jack!”

“Oh, the Nephilim?”

Dean did a double-take. “Wait. How do you know about Jack?”

“Okay so,” she let herself into the living room like she’d been coming there for years and settled in the seat Dean had just vacated. Dean sat on the other couch across the room to avoid being close to her. “A few years ago, Chuck showed up at my house with a copy of the last Supernatural book. It was awful, by the way. You, Sam, and Jack had this boring little battle with God at the side of a lake, then got killed and, like, it wasn’t even well written. So anticlimactic. Then Chuck snapped his fingers and made my kids and husband disappear.”

“Wait,” Dean interrupted. “You’re married?”

“I told you. I’ve moved on. So anyway, then he snapped his fingers again. From my point of view, no time passed, but suddenly I’m back in my house, Chuck is gone and several weeks have passed. There’s a police investigation going on and everything. Everyone’s been wondering where we went, and I can’t exactly tell them God dusted us. Can you believe Chuck is God? I dated God! I haven’t seen him since that."

"We've been keeping an eye on him. He works as a barista in Jacksonville, because no publishers will take his shitty-ass books."

“Yikes. It's what he deserves, I guess. So I tried to find a way to contact you guys. I figured you’d have an explanation. The number I had for Sam didn’t work anymore, so I looked into news reports around the country of anything demony, ghosty, vampirey, anything your M.O. I got to flex my RP skills a bit. It’s been a while since my old forum days. I pretended to be a reporter following up old cases, asked if the FBI had been involved. Mostly I got dead ends, but sometimes they gave me cards with rock aliases on them, but those numbers were out of service. I got a few other hunters, too. Most didn’t know you but some did, and some hung up on me the second I mentioned your name. You've pissed a lot of people off over the years.

“The ones who did know you said you retired but didn’t know where. They kept giving me the numbers of other hunters to see if they knew and finally a hunter named Gail gave me this address, so here I am!”

She barely took a breath throughout her whole speech. Christ, he’d forgotten how much she could talk. Dean, Cas, and Jack shared a sideways glance. 

“Becky,” Dean started tentatively. “All that stuff, Chuck dusting you, us fighting him, that was four years ago. You’ve spent four years trying to find us?”

“On and off. I needed answers! I could have done it faster if I was doing this full time, but I had to make time around the kids. It’s easier now they're older and don’t need me to watch them so much anymore.”

For a woman that claimed to have moved on, she sure was obsessed with him. Dean wondered what her husband thought of her fixation on two supposedly fictional men, or had she told him the truth? Actually, he didn’t care. He just wanted her ear-splitting voice out of his house as soon as possible. 

“Wow. Okay. What are your questions?” And make them quick.

She immediately launched into what was a clearly prepared set of questions, in the way that only someone who had been imagining a conversation for nearly half a decade could do. 

“What happened in your fight with Chuck? Obviously, you didn’t die, like he wrote, so how’d you win?”

“Jack absorbed his power and became the new God.”

Becky stared wide-eyed at Jack. “Woah. So how’d we come back?”

“Jack brought everyone back.”

Jack nodded, looking very pleased with himself. 

“And Cas? How’d he get out of The Empty? Beautiful speech, by the way, Castiel.”

Cas looked very uncomfortable with the idea of Becky being a voyeur on one of his most vulnerable moments. 

“Jack did that, too,” Dean said quickly to cover the awkwardness. 

“So Jack is like, super powerful?”

“Yep!” Jack beamed. He turned to Dean. “Do we have any Cocoa Puffs? I’m starving.”

“Sure kid, cupboard above the fridge.”

Jack left the room with a spring in his step. 

“So, that guy’s the new God?” Becky blinked in shock. 

“Yep. Cute, ain’t he?”

“So uh, if you don't mind my asking…” Becky hedged. “Cas told you he loved you and now you’re living together. Are you two…?” She trailed off suggestively. 

Cas locked eyes with Dean. “Together? Yes.”

Becky squealed and clapped her hands in glee. “What about Sam. Where’s he now? Is he happy?”

“He lives a few miles away. With Eileen,” Dean said pointedly.

Becky looked suddenly murderous. “Who’s Eileen?”

“You know who Jack is but not Eileen? Did Chuck write Eileen out of the ending? Oh man, she’d hate that. Sam was dating Eileen long before we took on Chuck. They got married a while back and have a son.” 

Dean reached for the photo he took of the three of them in the hospital the day Harry was born off the mantle and handed it to her. 

“Aww, he’s so cute. The baby, I mean,” she corrected. 

“You’re not still crazy obsessed with him?”

“No! I’m married, too. I’ve definitely moved on.” She stroked the frame above the part containing Sam’s face. “He’s still so pretty though.”

“Alright, that’s enough.”

Dean put the picture back on the mantle, next to another one of the six of them at the wedding. 

“Sorry. So what’s up with you guys? Hunting free life?”

Dean was happy to get the topic away from Sam. 

“I own a diner. The burger joint off the highway. You probably passed it on the way here. It’s become a bit of a hunter pit stop recently. Old friends drop in now and again. I help out where I can, or send them up to Gail at the bunker. Cas is human, now. He gave up immortality to bone a fry cook. What a guy. He works as a translator.

“That’s cool.” Becky looked genuinely impressed. 

Cas tilted his head at Dean. Even after all this time, he couldn’t see his beautiful soul the way Cas could. Though to be fair, Cas was having trouble remembering any of his redeeming qualities right now.

He turned back to her. “I used to do mostly books, but I started doing freelance for extra money when Dean bought the diner. Just a few manuscripts in old languages, here and then. Until I messed up a few weeks ago. Mostly, I translated things like Latin or Ancient Greek. Dead languages, but still known. Someone sent me a stack of documents to translate and accidentally included a photograph of a stone tablet, carved in an ancient dialect only spoken by one small village in what is now Estonia three thousand years ago. It was the end of the day and I was tired, I wasn’t thinking, I just wanted to go home and it was the last thing I had to do, so I just translated it and sent it back. I got a phone call the next day from the head of linguistics at Columbia University asking me how the hell I did that. Apparently, they’ve been trying to translate it for years with no luck.”

“How’d they know what you said was correct, then?”

“They had translated two words that were very similar to other languages at the time, and my translation confirmed them. And the tablet mentions the area it was found and I would have had no way of knowing that.

“News spread quite fast. The dead languages community is small, only a few colleges have departments dedicated to them. All of a sudden I’ve got piles of documents from all over the world on my desk. I’ve had to stop book translations for the time being. My co-workers are confused. They have no idea how I’m doing this. I had to make something up about how all languages become easy once you know enough of them. I don’t think they bought it, but it’s easier than explaining you were in Mesopotamia at the time they were written.”

“Ex-angel problems, huh?” Dean smirked. “Anyways, as lovely as this little catch-up has been, we’ve got a busy schedule.”

Dean tried to usher her out of the seat. 

“Dean, we have no plans for today,” Cas added like the traitor he was. 

“Shut the fuck up, Cas, yes we do,” Dean whispered through his teeth. 

Realization dawned on Cas’s face. “Oh right. The… thing. That we’re doing. Today. Now. Yes. You should go.”

Dean shot him an exasperated look. He still couldn’t tell a convincing lie after all these years. Dean had managed to guess where all his birthday presents were hidden last year because Cas’s eyes kept drifting to the cupboard under the stairs every time Dean brought it up. 

“Oh, I didn’t mean to intrude. I’d better be off, anyway. Long drive home. Can I… call you?”

Dean wrote a fake number on the notepad Cas kept next to the phone for recording message and handed it to her. “Sure.”

He all but pushed her out onto the porch and nearly had the door closed behind her when she turned around. “Could you tell Sam I stopped by? We didn’t exactly leave things on good terms.”

“Oh, I’ll make sure to. Have a nice drive.”

He slammed the door, then leaned his head against the wood and sighed. “Oh my god, she’s more annoying than I remembered.”

He took his phone out of his pocket and dialed the second number on his speed dial. It was answered after two rings.

“Heya Sammy, you are never going to believe which psycho stalker ex of yours just showed up at my house.”

Dean paused while Sam spoke. 

“What do you mean ‘which one?’”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Referenced ambiguously underage sex.  
> Referenced drug use. 
> 
> I actually love peas, I don't know why I did them dirty like this.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in the end notes.

"Good evening, Chloe,” Cas politely greeted the waitress.

“Hi Cas!” she replied happily. She looked behind him expectantly and her face fell. “Is Jack not with you today?”

“Not today. He’s back at college now.”

“Oh.”

Chloe had been quite infatuated with Jack the last time he’d come to the diner. Cas had tried to convince her the age gap between them was too large, but she insisted two years wasn’t that much. Not able to tell her Jack’s real age, he’d had to give up that argument. 

“Hey, boss! Your boyfriend’s here!” she shouted back at the kitchen, just about failing to cover the disappointment in her voice. 

Dean came out of the kitchen a moment later wearing a white apron slung over his jeans and a single layer of a soft green Henley that he usually wore in the kitchen due to the heat and Cas always appreciated it. “Hey babe, what are you doing here?” Dean kissed him on the cheek.

“I finished work early so I thought I’d come here for dinner.”

“Aww, ain't you sweet? The usual?”

“Yes. No cheese.”

“Yeah, I know what the usual is, babe. Always with the no cheese.”

Dean walked back into the kitchen, muttering about how he couldn’t believe he was dating someone who didn’t like cheese on their burgers.

Once Dean was out of earshot, a man on the other side of the diner scoffed. “Thought this was a respectable establishment.”

Cas spared him a brief glance, but otherwise ignored him in favor of sitting down in his favorite booth at the front of the diner. He started to absentmindedly play with the salt shaker to fill the time. 

The man lasted less than a minute before speaking up again, seemingly addressing the room as a whole, as there was no one sitting at his table. “Can’t even get a burger these days without some queers shoving their lifestyle down your throats. It’s disgusting.”

All the other patrons lifted their heads in curiosity, except one old man in the back corner kept eating his food as if nothing were happening.

Cas set the shaker back down and took a deep breath to compose himself. Humans and their petty hang-ups about sexuality. He would never understand it. 

He turned around in his seat. “Do you have a problem, sir?”

Cas finally got a good look at his harasser. He wasn’t dressed too dissimilarly from the restaurant’s usual clientele in his Hells Angel-esque leather jacket and faded denim jeans, but the tattoos on his neck singled him out as having philosophies very different from Cas’s own. 

“Yeah, I got a problem.” He stood from his chair and crossed over to Cas’s table. “I just found out my dinner was made by some pansy, and who knows where his hands have been. I’m probably going to need shots.”

He spat on the floor.

Cas shifted his eyes from the sullied spot on the ground to look him resolutely in the eye. “If you’re not happy, you’re welcome to leave.”

“Oh, I’m gonna. But I want a refund first. Don’t want my money going to some gay bar.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Cas could see Chloe run into the kitchen. Dean and the other staff followed her out a second later. 

“Winchester, you gonna help him?” Diego asked, slinging a dish towel over his shoulder. 

Dean could see why they were worried. The trucker, who had been in only a few times before so Dean didn’t know his name yet, had at least six inches and a hundred pounds on Cas. Plus, Cas had just finished work and, even when he worked from home, he dressed for the occasion. The sight of a dorky guy in khakis and a sweater vest under an ill-fitting trench coat next to a man with knuckle tattoos and a skull t-shirt might have had some panicking. But Dean knew better.

Cas had taken the whole ‘becoming human’ thing very seriously and had spent weeks researching the optimal way to care for the human body. As such, he always ate perfectly balanced meals, got his five portions of fruits and vegetables, and most importantly, worked out five days a week. Years of weightlifting combined with Cas’s millennia of experience fighting in Heaven’s armies made him a formidable opponent. 

“Nah, he’s got this,” Dean smirked. 

The trucker finally noticed Dean’s presence and turned to snarl at him. 

“Oi, Landlord! I want my money back!” he shouted. 

Dean’s smile didn’t falter. “What for? You’ve almost finished your food. There’s obviously nothing wrong with it.”

“For selling goods under false pretenses,” he huffed with the righteousness of a woman with a speak-to-the-manager haircut who’d read the terms of service one time. 

“That’s a new one. What would those pretenses be?”

“Didn’t tell me my food was going to be made by a faggot.”

Silence fell in the diner. Everyone set down their cutlery and focused their attention on Cas, except the old man, who finished his burger and started dunking his fries in ketchup. Cas turned back at Dean and there was a moment of unspoken communication between them using just their eyes. With a nod, Dean spoke. 

“Give him hell, Cas.”

Before the man could react, Cas punched him square in the jaw. The force of the blow caused him to bend over sideways, so Cas grabbed him by the collar and marched him to the door, pushing it open with the man's head. 

Cas pushed him with such strength down the stairs that he stumbled and fell to the ground, scuffing his knees in the gravel.

“Don’t. You. _Ever_ —” Each word was punctuated by another punch to the face, “—use language like that again. Do you understand me?”

Cas hauled the man up by his shirtfront so he could look him in the eye.

“Fuck you.” The trucker spat blood in Cas’s face. 

Cas changed his grip so his hands were on the man's shoulders, and used his new leverage to bring his body down and knee him in his chin. Then, while he was doubled over, Cas elbowed him between the shoulder blades, causing him to fall forwards and cut his palms in the road. 

“Are you ready to apologize yet?” he asked measuredly, barely out of breath. 

The man scoffed a laugh and reached into his back pocket to pull out a switchblade, which he flicked open to reveal a two-inch knife. 

“Never.”

He barely took a swing with the blade before Cas kicked it out of his hands, sending it flying. He grabbed the man by the chin with his left hand and pulled his angel blade from his inside pocket with his right. He spun it around in his fingers and pointed the tip of the blade into the man's jaw, right at the junction with his neck. 

“Are you sure?”

Cas pressed just hard enough that a single drop of blood fell from his jaw. 

He winced, and for the first time, Cas could see fear in his face. “Alright, alright. Quit it.”

“Say it.” Cas pressed the blade a little harder.

“I’m sorry, okay? Just let me up.”

“That wasn’t so difficult, now, was it?” Cas shoved him back so he fell onto his ass, then gave him one final kick for good measure. 

He placed the blade back into his pocket and turned back to the diner. Dean’s co-workers were all standing open-mouthed in the doorway. A few patrons were watching through the windows with impressed looks on their faces.

“That was hot as shit.” Dean met Cas halfway and kissed him full on the mouth, knowing the homophobe was still watching. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

Dean turned to the man clambering to his feet. “In case you didn’t get the memo, you’re banned. And tell any of your close-minded friends they're not welcome either.”

Dean threw an arm across Cas’s shoulders and walked him back inside, grabbing a napkin from the stand to wipe the blood off his face.

“Didn’t take you for the type, Cas,” Diego mused in awe.

“Oh well, uh, Dean’s been teaching me,” he lied quickly. 

“And where did you get that knife?”

“Uh, Christmas present. For self-defense.”

“Cool.”

Dean addressed the room of nosy diners, who were all still gawking at the scene. “Anyone else got a problem with me and Cas?”

Most of them shook their heads. The old man in the corner didn’t look up from his meal. He probably hadn’t even noticed the fight.

“I ain’t got no problem,” came a gruff-sounding voice from the left side of the room. 

“Thank you, Paul,” Dean said, nodding at the regular. 

“Me neither,” said another voice from the right. “My nephew’s gay and he’s a great kid. Damn sight better than his brother. That idjit voted Trump. Twice,” he growled. 

“And false pretenses, my ass!” Paul continued. “There’s a picture of the two of you on the counter. His fault if he didn’t notice.”

Dean smiled at the picture Jack had taken of them fishing at the lake together a few years earlier. 

“Good. Glad that’s settled. Sit down, Cas. I owe you a burger. It’s probably burnt by now, though.”

Dean grimaced at the sizzling sound coming from the kitchen. 

***

Dean settled in his favorite spot on the couch, wiggled his butt into the long-established indent, and dragged a blanket over his lap. He reached for the remote to turn on the TV then kicked his feet up on the rest Cas had bought him to stop putting his feet on the coffee table. He groaned. 

Without looking up from his bare feet, Dean called to the next room. 

“Cas! Can you bring me my—”

Cas walked into the room, Dean’s slippers in hand. 

Dean smiled as he took the slippers from Cas and put them on. 

“Aww, man. You know me so well. Have I ever told you I love you?” he asked with a cocky grin. 

Cas didn’t reply. He looked away from Dean and started picking at his fingernails. 

Dean instantly picked up his change in mood. “Cas? Babe? What’s wrong? Did I say something?”

“No.”

“No?” Dean asked, confused. “So what’s eating you?”

“I mean, ‘no’, you’ve never told me you love me.”

Dean blinked up at him, even more confused now. 

“What are you talking about? I say it all the time?” he protested. 

Cas turned away from Dean, as though he could hardly stand to look at him.

“No, you don’t, Dean. You’ve told me you _need_ me, that you _chose_ me, that I’m everything to you, but you’ve never said ‘I love you.’”

Dean stumbled. He tried to think of a time he’d said it, but his mind came up blank. 

“And you know what?” Cas continued. “I tried to convince myself that it was okay. That you were a man of actions, not words. That you told me you loved me when you picked me up from the shops because it started raining, when you bought that yogurt I like, even though you don't, when you kiss the back of my neck when I’m working, just because. 

“But it’s been four years! By now, once would have been nice.”

Cas looked back at Dean, his eyes starting to fill with tears. Dean shook his head.

“No. No, that can’t be true. I must have said it.”

“You think I’ve forgotten?” he laughed humorlessly. “My memory may not be what it used to be, but I wouldn’t forget a thing like that. 

“As an angel, I could remember every second of my existence, and even now, those memories are crystal clear in my head. My human memories are fuzzier. I don’t remember what I ate for lunch last Thursday, or what score Jack got on his last project, but I would definitely remember the first time you told me you love me.”

Dean stood from his chair and took Cas’s hands in his. 

“But you _know_ , right?” he asked softly, locking eyes with Cas. 

“Know what, Dean? Say it.”

“I— Cas, I—” Dean trailed off. He couldn’t find the words to express how he felt when he was put on the spot like this. He looked down to the floor. 

Cas felt as though he’d been slapped across the face. “You still can’t say it. Even after all this, you can’t say it. That’s it! I need some space.”

Cas wrenched his hands out of Dean’s and stormed from the room. He took his coat and shoes from the hallway, and without even bothering to put them on, headed out to his car. 

“Cas! Cas, wait!” Dean called after him. 

“Do _not_ follow me.”

The sound of more anger in Cas’s voice than he had ever heard caused him to freeze still just outside the front door. His feet felt like they were welded to the ground as he watched Cas get in his car and slam the door.

Dean was left on the porch, staring longingly as he drove away. He fell to the floor, his back against the wall, and felt tears roll down his cheeks. 

*

Dean paced up and down past the table the café’s waitress had given him. He knew he was getting weird looks, but he didn’t care. 

He didn’t look up when he heard the door open and didn’t register the sound of Sam’s footsteps until they were right next to him. 

“Dean? What’s wrong?”

Dean didn’t stop his pacing. “I messed up, Sammy. I messed up big time.”

Sam took his seat at the table. “Yeah, I figured something happened. You wouldn’t have phoned me at nine in the morning on a Sunday to invite me for an ‘Emergency brunch’ if everything was okay.”

The waitress from earlier came over to take their order. She kept side-eyeing Dean for not sitting down, then left with a small huff. 

“Okay, now I definitely know something’s wrong.”

“What?” Dean briefly looked up from his wringing hands. 

“For one, you didn’t order any food. You must be going through something if you’re off your food. And two, you didn’t bat an eyelid when I ordered avocado on toast. On any normal day, you’d mock me for my hippie food. Now what gives?”

He stopped his pacing and put his hands down on the table. “Am I in love with Cas?”

Sam stared at him in disbelief. “Is that what this is? You’ve just realized you’re in love with the guy you’ve been dating for years, and you’re having a big gay freak out about it?” he scoffed. 

“For the thousandth time, it’s big _bisexual_ freak out, and no. I did all that years ago. Turns out locking yourself in your room and drinking yourself half to death because your best friend died is a good time for some introspection. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.”

He wasn’t kidding. Claire had dragged him to a pride parade the previous summer and he’d happily bought the pink, purple and blue striped shirt from the overpriced merch stall. Cas had made more of a fuss over the rainbow tie Dean had tried to buy him, saying ‘Angels have no concept of gender, so while I may have a biologically male body and present as male while using he/him pronouns, I would be just as comfortable in any other body or clothing. And while I am in a relationship with a man, I see people for their souls and could just as easily fall in love with anyone of any gender presentation.’ Dean had just told him to shut the fuck up and wrapped the tie around his neck anyway. 

“So…?” Sam trailed off expectantly. 

“So Cas says I’ve never told him I love him, but I must have, right? Right? Sammy, please tell me you’ve heard me say that to Cas.”

“Er…” Sam was quiet for far too long. 

“That’s not good.”

Dean resumed his pacing, walking from one side of the café to the other, past several tables of annoyed diners. 

“But you do love him, right?” Sam asked once he was back at their table. 

“Of course I do! I gave that guy what was left of my virginity! I wouldn’t do that for just anybody!”

Unfortunately, the waitress chose this moment to appear at their table with Sam’s toast and coffee. She pursed her lips at Dean.   
  
Sam shot her an apologetic look. 

“Alright, I get it, you were half a virgin when you met him, now keep your voice down.”

Dean paused. “Did you seriously just quote Mean Girls at me?”

“Did you seriously just _get_ my Mean Girls reference?”

“...Touché,” he conceded. 

“Okay, so you and Cas have been together for, what, four years? And you’ve not said I love you yet? Give me some context. When did he first say it to you?”

Dean groaned and finally sat down. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that. It doesn’t make me look good.”

“Less than a year into the relationship?”

Dean buried his head in his hands.

“Less than six months?”

He just whined and didn’t look up.

“One month?”

He didn’t answer. 

“Wow. That early, huh? What, he said I love you on the first date? That’s a bit eager,” Sam teased. 

“It was before that,” Dean said, muffled by his hands. 

“What?”

“It was before we started dating, alright?”

Sam frowned with confusion at his brother. 

“Do you remember his deal with The Empty?” Dean continued. “Where he had to experience true happiness?”

“Yeah, Dean, I remember the time my friend died.” Sam rolled his eyes. 

“Well, apparently his version of happiness was telling my closeted ass he was in love with me.”

“Huh. That’s what happened that day?” 

Sam reveled in this new information.

“Why? What did you think happened?”

“Well, at first I thought you fucked each other’s brains out, but then you told me you hadn’t slept together yet, so then I figured you had a crazy make-out session or something.”

“What are we? Sixteen?”

“Well, the two of you do fuck like teenagers.”

Dean huffed a laugh. “We have actually toned it down a bit recently. We’re both getting older and neither of us can be bothered with the schemantics on the regular anymore.”

Sam furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”

“I’ll spare your poor little heterosexual ears the details, but let’s just say there’s a certain amount of prep work involved, alright?”

Sam’s face lit up in realization, then quickly turned to disgust. “Oh, ew. Why bother then?”

“Because it feels amazing in the moment. Look, don’t knock it till you try it. I’m sure Eileen would love to get the strap out.”

Dean smirked cockily at Sam. 

“Dean, we’re supposed to be talking about your love life, not mine.” Sam rolled his eyes again. He seemed to do that a lot around his brother.

“Boo, you whore. But my point is, we don’t have sex nearly as much as we used to.”

“Like when we still lived in the bunker and I caught you in almost every damn room?”

Sam tried his hardest to ignore the pictures springing up in his mind, unwanted. 

“Hey, we were never doing anything un-PG-13.”

“At the time. But who knows what might have happened if I hadn’t walked in.”

Dean chuckled. “Yeah, true. But you know what was worse than that? That first month he became human. _God,_ he was on me constantly. I swear my dick almost fell off by the end of it. Seriously. I thought ‘Hey, at least he sleeps now. I get eight hours of peace.’ But no! He’d wake me up at 3 am rubbing up on my ass!”

Sam glanced around to check none of the other diners had heard that and was met with a very disapproving glare from an elderly woman at the next table.

“How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t want to hear details of your sex life. Wait.” He paused to do some mental math. “The first month he was human? That was right before Harry was born, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, about then. Why?”

“You were round our house constantly, hovering over Eileen like a concerned midwife. It was super annoying. Did you actually care about her, or were you just hiding from Cas?”

“Bit of both?” he said sheepishly. “I needed some space, okay?”

His mind flashed with the image of Cas’s face as he said almost the same words an hour earlier. His mood suddenly somber, he collapsed back in his chair. 

“What if he doesn’t forgive me, Sammy? We’ve never had a fight this bad, ever. Not even the time he found out I was lying to him about ketchup being a vegetable and he realized he’d been calculating his macros wrong for years. What if he leaves me? I can’t be without him.”

Sam hesitantly gripped Dean’s wrist where it lay in front of him on the table. “Do you remember what I told you the first time you guys slept together?”

“No?” He’d had other things on his mind that day that he would much rather think about other than his brother. 

“I said he was looking at you like you personally hung the stars in the sky.”

“I’m definitely hung,” he couldn’t help but quip, despite his mood. 

“You made that same joke last time, too.”

“It’s still true.”

Sam ignored him. “My point is, that’s how he looked at you when you first got together, and he hasn’t stopped. I don’t think anyone has ever been in love more than he is with you. He’ll forgive you. Just give him some time.”

Sam finished his toast and called the waitress over so he could pay. She seemed reluctant to approach the table again and stood as far away from Dean as possible. Sam left her a large tip as an apology.

Sam gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder, then headed to his car. Dean drove the whole way back mentally practicing and rewriting his apology speech.

Once he pulled in the driveway, he was surprised to find Cas’s car in its usual spot on the driveway. He called into the house eagerly but was met with a deafening silence. Cas must be out at the lake or something. 

The drive to the café had been down a particularly muddy lane, so Baby was a bit of a mess. He changed into his car-cleaning shorts, thankful for the unseasonably warm weather, and filled a bucket in the kitchen sink.

He doused the car in soapy water and murmured apologies to her for allowing her to get into such a state in the first place. He had just started washing down Baby’s hood with the sponge when he heard the front door creak open. 

Cas walked through the door with a book in one hand and one of the dining room chairs in the other. Like the true old man he was becoming, he had taken to reading out on the porch recently. He settled in the chair, put on his reading glasses, and started to read Lizzo’s new autobiography that he’d just picked up from the library in town. 

Dean finished up the hood and made his way over to the wheels. As he bent down, he swore he heard a sharp intake of breath from the porch, but when he looked up, Cas was engrossed in his book, although his eyes weren’t moving.

Challenge accepted, Dean changed over to the back wheel, making a show of sticking his ass out as he leaned down. He wiggled his hips maybe slightly more than was necessary to gain his balance, but another glance up to the porch told him it was working.

Cas had completely abandoned the pretense of reading and was staring unabashedly at Dean’s ass. With a chuckle, Dean connected the hose to the tap at the front of the house and started washing away the suds, not even bothering to clean the far side. And if he ‘accidentally’ got a bunch of water over his white shirt, rendering it see-through, who was going to judge him?

Once he’d washed the car long enough to clean it three times over, he had to reluctantly admit it was time to stop. He tucked the hose away and put the sponge in the now empty bucket to carry it on his hip back inside. 

As he walked past Cas, he felt a hand reach out and grab his free one. Cas looked up at him with a doe-eyed expression. 

“Don’t you think she could do with a new coat of wax, too?” he asked innocently. 

Dean huffed a laugh. He brought Cas’s hand up to his lips and kissed it. He took that to mean he was forgiven. 

***

“Are they here yet?”

“If they were here, you’d be able to see them by now,” Cas sassed back at Dean. 

Dean laid his head back on his towel and stretched his toes in the sand. They’d arrived in California a few days before to help Jack move in with some friends for his final year at Stanford. He couldn’t believe how quickly the time had gone. It seemed like only yesterday Jack was eating angel hearts. They grow up so fast. 

Next to him, Cas was in his swimming trunks, his new tattoo of Dean and Jack’s names in Enochian gleaming in the scorching sun. He’d picked up a few others over the years, which Dean hadn’t minded one bit. His hair, wet from the ocean, curled lightly around his ears. The one human thing Cas had never gotten the hang of was getting regular haircuts, but Dean never reminded him.

Dean glanced down towards the shoreline. Jack and Miracle were splashing in the shallows of the ocean. Jack scooped up a handful of water in his hands and poured it over Miracle’s head. Miracle retaliated by shaking his whole body, drenching Jack. 

“Ah, I see them.”

The sound of Cas’s voice caused Dean to sit and shield his eyes from the blazing sun with his hand. Three figures were approaching him, all vastly different sizes. Dean and Cas stood to welcome them.

“How’s my favorite nephew?” Dean greeted, his arms stretched wide. 

“Unca Cas! Unca Cas!”

The toddler ran smack into Cas’s legs and hugged him. Cas bent to pick him up and placed him on his hip. 

“Good morning, Harrison.”

Harry giggled and buried his face in Cas’s shoulder. 

“Wow, okay traitor. Guess I’m not your favorite uncle anymore.”

“It’s okay, Dean,” Eileen said with a reassuring pat on his shoulder. “Sam hasn't been his favorite parent for months.”

Sam sighed in a long-suffering, over-tired parent way. “Only because you don’t tell him off when he runs around the house screaming.”

“Deaf girl perks.” Eileen threw up a peace sign. 

Harry’s head turned at the sound of a huffing bark. Miracle had spotted the newcomers and was running to meet them. Jack followed closely behind him. 

“Unca Jack! Mi’cle!”

Harry wiggled out of Cas’s arms and flopped onto the sand, but quickly righted himself the way only a young child could do. 

Harry ran straight to Miracle and hugged him tightly around the neck. Cas caught up with them. 

“You have to be gentle with Miracle now, Harry. He’s getting a bit older, so he can’t do everything he used to anymore. Do you understand?”

“Yeah!”

Harry proceeded to give Miracle a much gentler hug. 

“That’s a good boy.”

Cas ruffled his hand through Harry’s soft brown hair and took him back to the rest of the group. 

“I must say, Cas, workout routine looks like it’s going well.” Eileen ran an appreciative eye over Cas’s torso. 

Cas flustered at the praise. “Oh. Um, thank you. Your, um… y-you also looks… nice.”

Cas gestured vaguely to her one-piece swimsuit and sarong combo. 

“Wow. You have no idea how to give compliments, do you?” she teased. 

“I have been told it’s not my forte.”

Dean smirked. “Yeah, it’s a good thing I get off on being told what a fucking dumbass I am.”

“Dean,” Sam scolded, looking down at Harrison, who was luckily too busy shaking Miracle’s paw to notice. To date, it was the only trick they had ever managed to teach him. 

“Oops. Keep forgetting I can’t swear in front of the baby. Not really a baby anymore, though. Don’t you think it’s about time we taught him some new words?”

“He’s just turned three, not thirteen. I could do without him picking up your potty mouth just yet.”

Harry yelled excitedly, startling everyone. He pointed enthusiastically at two teenage girls who walked past licking ice lollies. 

_Ice cream, ice cream, ice cream,_ he signed at his parents. 

“No, Harrison. You’ve had enough sugar today,” Sam said sternly. 

Harrison made puppy dog eyes at his mom. 

“Of course, Harry. Oh, shut up, Sam,” she said upon seeing his disapproving face, “we’re on holiday.”

“This is the real reason you’re his favorite,” Sam muttered. “You spoil him.”

“Can I get an ice cream, too?” Jack asked his parents. 

“You got money?” Dean replied snarkily. 

“Uh, no.”

“Then no.”

“Dean,” Cas chastised, already reaching for his wallet. “What do you want, Jack?”

Jack listed his order. 

“That’s four different ice creams! I’m not paying for all that!” Dean yelled. 

“No, you’re not. I am,” Cas reminded him.

“Joint bank account, babe. Mi money es su money.”

“Well, you spent $500 on car parts last month, so I can spend a few dollars on ice cream if I want to.”

Dean backed down. He knew he wasn’t going to win this argument. 

Cas offered to go with Sam and Eileen to the ice cream parlor they’d seen a few yards up the beach while Dean watched the kids. 

“If you’re getting Jack all that, then I want something decent, too,” Dean shouted after them as they left. “I want one of those fancy waffle cones. With the chocolate tops. And a flake. And butterscotch sauce! And sprinkles!”

Dean’s voice finally faded from earshot as they rounded the corner.

“How _do_ you put up with him?” Sam asked Cas. 

“Years of practice. You must know. You lived with him for longer than I have.”

“Yeah, well I didn’t have a choice. I was stuck with him. But you chose this.”

“A foolish move on my part.” Cas shook his head. 

“Does he ever shut up?” Sam groaned. 

Cas shrugged. “There is one thing I’ve found that works.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that? Because right now I’d be willing to try anythi—”

Cas pushed Sam up against the nearby wall with his forearm across his chest. He stood so far into Sam’s personal space that their entire bodies were pressed together. Cas held his face up to Sam’s so their noses were touching and looked him square in the eye. Sam breathed heavily, his lips parting. 

“Interesting,” he mused. “That works on both Winchester brothers. It must be a shared genetic trait.”

Cas dropped his arm and continued walking to the ice cream shop as if he’d never been interrupted. 

Sam took a few more breaths to compose himself then stepped away from the wall. When he looked over at Eileen, she had her eyebrows raised. 

“Is it weird that I found that kind of… hot?” 

Still kind of shaken, Sam replied, “I think what’s weirder, is that _I_ found that kind of hot.”

Sam shuddered to try and clear his head of thoughts of being briefly attracted to his best friend. 

“Hey, if you want to hook up with Cas, I wouldn’t mind. As long as I get to watch.” She winked at him.

Sam pursed his lips. “Okay, I’m not _that_ into him.”

“Shame.”

They followed after Cas to get the ice cream and headed back to the others, all of them juggling multiple lollies in their fingers thanks to Jack’s massive order. 

Dean rubbed his hands together in glee when he saw his ice cream in Cas’s hand. Sam and Eileen handed the four ice creams to Jack, who beamed back at them. 

“How you gonna eat all of those before they melt, huh?” Dean asked with butterscotch sauce all around his mouth. 

“They won’t melt,” Jack answered with surety. 

A few minutes after they’d finished their ice creams, a man walked past advertising paddleboat rentals. Dean instantly jumped at the opportunity. 

“Come on guys, it sounds like fun!”

“Kind of expensive, though,” Sam said, frowning at the price on the pamphlet.

“No worries, it’s on Cas. I’m sure the Richie Rich of ice creams over here can afford it.”

Cas tilted his head at Dean, but agreed. Harry didn’t take nearly as much convincing. Jack decided to stay behind to watch Miracle and eat his remaining ice creams. He waved them off with a curious expression on his face. 

At the rental place, the man Dean had seen earlier handed them all life jackets, that they all fastened, and led them out to the boats. 

There were two seats at the front by the paddles and a bench at the back that was big enough for three. Sam sat at the back. 

“You can get up here, Sasquatch. You and Cas can do all the hard work,” Dean protested. 

“No thanks,” he smirked. “I’m going to sit back here with my family.”

“You’re in better shape than me,” he argued. 

“Exactly. You could use the workout.”

Dean begrudgingly got in the front and left Cas to steer as they pedaled out to sea. 

The ocean stretched out for miles in front of them, the sun glinting off the white-crested waves. Several other families, also with young children, were cruising around in their paddle boats. Dean pedaled them further out into the expanse to avoid colliding with them. 

“Hey, did you hear Bess had the baby?” Sam asked, the first one to speak other than Harry babbling in delight. 

“Oh yeah, a few days ago, right? Another boy?” Dean replied.

“Yeah. Did you hear what they named it?”

“No?”

“Bobby.”

“God damn it, why does no one ever name their kids after me?”

Dean’s grumbling was cut off by a yelp from Eileen. She fell from her seat and tumbled forwards, almost knocking into Cas. 

The reason for her fall was soon made obvious. The edge of her sarong had flown up in the wind and gotten caught in the rotating paddle mechanism at the front of the boat. Dean and Cas instantly stopped pedaling and Sam threw out a hand to catch her. 

From her slightly undignified position on the floor, she tried to yank her skirt free, but it wasn’t budging. Cas looked like he was about to help, but realized it might be inappropriate for him to put his hands so close to a lady’s thigh, so he offered up the job to Sam. 

After a few minutes of tugging, and Dean’s very unhelpful yelling of “Pivot!”, they managed to get the sarong free, albeit with a small rip in the hem. 

Eileen turned back to the bench seat and froze. 

“Where’s Harry?”

Her hands frantically clenched around the unbuckled life jacket abandoned on the chair. 

All heads snapped up. No one moved for a second while they processed the information but then they jumped to action, leaning over the edge of the boat to scan the water for signs of him. 

In all the commotion of trying to free Eileen, no one had noticed how far out to sea they’d drifted. The water sloshed heavily against the plastic siding, unbalancing the inhabitants. The other boat renters were too far out of earshot to call for help. 

“Harry!”

“Harrison!”

“Can you see him?”

“ _Harry!_ ”

Words overlapped one another, voices breaking. The waves surging against the boat drowned out all other sounds and made it impossible to spot something as small as a child struggling in the water. 

After seeing nothing for several minutes, Eileen fell back into her seat and began to sob, deep, rattling cries. Sam sat on the seat next to her and tried to wrap her in a hug, but she shook him off. 

“Don’t you touch me!” she screeched. “This is your fault! You put that jacket on him! Did you even check it was on right?”

“My fault? You were supposed to be watching him!”

“I was kind of preoccupied!”

“Guys, stop—” Dean tried to say. 

“Stay out of this, Dean,” Sam snarled. 

“No, seriously! Stop arguing! I think I hear something.”

They all fell silent, other than their panicked breaths. For a few moments, he didn’t hear anything, but then the unmistakable sound of a child’s scream reached him. 

“There!”

He pointed towards a few hundred yards behind the boat at a small hand sticking up from the water. 

He jumped back into his seat, his feet getting hit by the pedals already turning from Cas’s frenzied cycling, and steered the boat around. 

The screaming sounds got louder the closer they got. Soon they could make out a head of dark brown hair poking up at them. 

“We’re coming, Harrison!” Sam called out. 

Once they were close enough, Sam shucked off his own life jacket and dived headfirst into the water, ignoring the saltwater filling his mouth, and swam until he was close enough to grab him. 

A strange sight met him. Harrison didn’t look frightened or upset, or in any way worried for his life. On the contrary, his face was stretched wide in a smile as he slapped his hands against the water. 

“Sp’ash, sp’ash, sp’ash,” he chirped, in a sing-song voice. 

“Harry?” Sam hedged, and he took him in his arms. 

“Daddy! Swim, swim!” he yelled, delighted to be joined in his new game, and Sam suddenly realized the sounds he thought were screams of dread were actually squeals of delight. 

He kicked his feet to propel them back to the boat, and they were met by Eileen, lowering her hands down to reach for her son. She squeezed him tightly into her chest and kissed his salt-drenched hair. 

“Don’t scare me like that, Harrison Blake,” she reprimanded. 

_Again, again, again!_ he signed, completely unaware of her heart pounding in her chest. 

_No. Absolutely not,_ she signed back. 

She picked up the life jacket and put it back onto his protesting body, making sure to buckle it extra tight. 

Dean extended a hand to his brother, who clambered back into the boat, doing his best not to rock them. Sam kissed the tops of his family’s heads in turn and sat down on Harry’s other side. 

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” Eileen whispered over the top of Harry’s head. 

“So am I,” he mouthed back and enveloped them both in a hug. 

Dean made his way back to the front of the paddleboat and sank into Cas’s embrace. 

“That was the most fucking stressful moment of my life,” he breathed into Cas’s shoulder. 

Cas kissed him on the temple. “Me too.”

Once everyone’s heartbeats had returned to normal, they pedaled back to the dock, even though they still had half an hour left on the rental. They all vowed never to set foot in one of those boats again. 

They headed back to their towels, which were still laying in the sand, guarded by Miracle, who was lying on his back drying off his underbelly, and Jack, who had just started eating his final ice cream, which, as he promised, hadn’t melted. 

Jack reached for Harry, but Eileen was reluctant to let him out of her grip. Eventually, the toddler’s wiggling became too much to handle and she passed him over but kept her hand pressed to his back. 

“Did you have a nice swim, Harrison?” Jack booped him on the nose, causing him to giggle. 

“Swim! Swim!”

Sam stared at him, dumbfounded. “Wait, you knew this was going to happen?” 

“Well, yeah. I _am_ God,” he shrugged, as though it were obvious. 

“And you didn’t think to tell us? We were scared out of our minds!” Eileen shrieked. 

“You shouldn’t have been. I told you he would be a great swimmer one day.”

“Hang on, you can see the future?” Dean asked, amazed. Jack knew this was going to happen? From the day Harry was born?

“Of course. I don’t do it often, though. Trying to be normal and all that. I only check for the important stuff. Life-threatening events, natural disasters, you know.”

“Oh, so I guess it wasn’t important enough to check before you blinked into existence in the kitchen a few months ago.”

Dean shuddered with the memory of The Incident, AKA the reason Jack had to text before coming to visit now. 

“Ooh, tell me,” Eileen begged, her earlier anger buried by her need for gossip. 

Cas glanced at Harry who was listening from Jack’s arms. He turned his back to the toddler and started to explain to Eileen what had happened in rapid sign language. Dean’s ASL still wasn’t perfect, but it was quite easy to follow what Cas was saying. Some of those signs were very self-explanatory.

She raised her eyebrows and shot him a judgemental look. “Wow. On the stove? Really?”

“Shut up, it was my birthday.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Homophobic language.  
> Use of the F slur.  
> Mention of alcohol as a coping mechanism.  
> A child in a potentially life-threatening situation.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in the end notes

Dean slumped into the house after work. He’d been picking up the late shifts for the last few weeks while Diego was on paternity leave and he was exhausted. Maybe Cas would ease some of his stress… 

“Hi honey, I’m home,” he addressed the empty hallway and tossed his keys into the bowl on the counter. 

When Cas didn’t reply, he headed further into the house to find him. It didn’t take long before he could hear Cas’s voice in the kitchen, so he made his way over. Cas was leaning on the counter, still in his work shirt but with the sleeve rolled up to his elbows, and had his phone pressed between his ear and his shoulder while he stirred a pot on the stove.

“Okay,” he spoke into the phone, “we’ll think about it. Stay safe. Dean says hi.”

“No, I didn’t,” Dean garbled around a piece of garlic bread he’d picked off the counter. 

Cas ignored him. “We’ll see you soon. Love you. Bye, Claire.”

Cas hung up the phone and put it back in his pocket. 

“That Claire?”

Cas rolled his eyes. “No, it was my urologist.”

He turned off the heat and plated up the pasta, placing more garlic bread on his own plate to make up for the earlier theft, and added some salad he knew Dean wouldn’t eat, but it was worth a shot.

“Alright, sassy pants. Let me guess what she wanted.” He held up a finger in turn. “One: she’s gotten into trouble again. Two: she’s got a new girlfriend. Three: Jody wants us to come for dinner.” Cas and Claire’s conversations didn’t usually deviate far from the norm.

Cas sighed and carried the plates over to the dining table. “Correct on all counts. The police caught her trespassing in an abandoned building while on a hunt, but they let her off with a warning. Her new girlfriend is called Amber. They met at the bar Claire’s been working at recently. And yes, Jody has invited us to dinner again.”

“Ugh,” Dean groaned and collapsed into his seat, “we already turned down Thanksgiving and Christmas. Can’t put it off again. I’ll text her to make plans.”

“You love Jody, why do you always delay dinner?”

“It’s not Jody I’m avoiding. There’s always drama whenever we go there.”

Dean proceeded to shovel pasta into his mouth, strategically avoiding eating anything green. 

“I’ll tell Claire to be on her best behavior.”

“Like she ever is.”

*

Harrison had become almost intolerable in the last hour of the drive, but Dean didn’t blame him; half a day in a car must be difficult for most children. At least all the adults in the car were used to such long stretches of wide-open roads and questionable local radio stations. 

They finally got out of the car at Jody’s, and Dean could see Sam and Eileen share sighs of relief out of the corner of his eye. 

As they made their way up to the front door, Cas addressed the sky. “Jack? We’re here.”

Jack appeared next to him a second later, smiling widely. 

“Hey, guys,” he said with a small wave. 

“Still don’t think it’s fair that you got to skip that whole journey,” Dean muttered venomously. 

“There was no room for me in the car,” came his very convenient excuse. 

“Whatever. Let’s do this.”

He knocked three times on the door and took some breaths to help mentally psych himself up for the inevitable shitstorm that was about to go down. 

The door swung open, revealing a very enthusiastic Jody. 

“Boys! Come on in!”

Jody pulled them all in for a hug in turn, Cas a little more awkwardly than the others. Harry ran past her and straight up to Claire, who gave him a high five. 

Donna came up to the door to greet them similarly, but with a much tighter hug. 

“It’s been too long. You’re not avoiding me, are you?” she teased, pulling out of the hug. 

“Never, Donna,” Sam said, returning her kiss to the cheek. 

“Yeah, it’s not you that we’re avoiding,” Dean muttered, making an ‘I’m watching you.’ gesture at Claire, who just made a face back at him. 

Donna pulled the remaining guest into another rib-squeezing hug. “Eileen! You keeping out of trouble?”

“Now, where would the fun be in that?” she smiled back. 

“A girl after my own heart, I see. Come in, I’ve just opened a bottle of Chardonnay.”

“Say no more.”

Eileen and Donna made their way to the kitchen. Dean could already feel this evening going downhill; a wine-drunk Eileen was a force to be reckoned with. 

Everyone was surprised by a new addition walking into the room. 

“Kaia!” Cas greeted. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Yeah, where’s Amber?” Dean asked Claire judgmentally. 

“Oh, we broke up,” she replied nonchalantly. 

Cas crossed the room to pat her on the shoulder. “You seemed so happy a week ago. What happened?”

“She said I ignored her. She thought I spent more time with Kaia than her. Crazy right?”

Dean shot a pointed look at Cas, who just shook his head lightly in response. 

Jody announced dinner was ready a few minutes later. She’d had to push two tables together to have space for all of them. Dean shoved Jack and Claire down to the smaller and slightly lower table at the end, where they were shortly joined by Kaia and Harry.

Donna started to pass around a second bottle of wine, the first one already empty. Jack tried to grab it when it made its way near to him, but Dean snatched it away. 

“Nuh-uh, no alcohol at the kids’ table.”

He poured Jack a glass of water out of a pitcher, then did the same for the others and set it in front of them with a smirk. 

“You know I’m old enough to drink now?” Claire snarked at him. 

“Sorry, can’t hear you from all the way down there. What was that? You want a coloring book? Some crayons?”

Dean laughed at his own joke because no one else was going to, and looked back to the mature end of the table. Once his back was turned, Jack poked a finger to his, Claire, and Kaia’s glasses, turning the contents into a deep red wine. 

“Nice.”

Claire clinked her glass into Jack’s. 

After all the food was eaten and the fourth bottle of wine drunk, Eileen put a very tired Harrison down in the guest room for the night, stumbling slightly as she walked. 

She sat down on the couch in Sam’s lap and started to snack on the after-dinner cheese platter that Jody had just brought out.

Being engrossed in a particularly luxurious piece of Camembert, she missed the start of the conversation until she looked up again, just in time to see Kaia ask Claire, “Is it weird seeing your dad, or a guy that looks like your dad, dating another guy?”

She shrugged. “Cas doesn’t look like my dad to me. Not anymore. There are the obvious things, like the voice and the glasses, but also, I dunno, he holds himself differently, laughs differently. My dad was a straight-laced, church-on-Sundays type. And Cas is, well, Cas is a doof.”

She smiled fondly at him and he chuckled. 

Dean threw his arm over the back of Cas’s shoulders, sloshing his wine glass slightly as he did. “Yeah, we’re not the weirdest relationship here anymore. When are you and Kaia going to sort things out, huh?” Dean slurred, the wine loosening his lips in more ways than one. 

An awkward silence fell in the room as everyone realized The Thing They Didn’t Talk About was being Talked About. 

“Dean!” Cas criticized, his eyes darting to Claire to read her reaction. 

Claire sat up straighter in her seat and set down the metaphorical gauntlet. “Oh, you’re coming for my dating life? Well, Cas has told me an awful lot about your past. At least I dated my girlfriends for over a month.”

“Cas!” Dean replied in the same scandalized tone as Cas. “What, you two just meet up to bitch about me, is that it?”

Claire shrugged. “Usually.”

"Does he tell you things that Sam has done? Because he's done way worse. Do I need to mention Ruby?”

“Who’s Ruby?” Eileen asked, her head whipping from side to side as she struggled to read everyone’s lips. 

“The demon he banged. And told me about. In explicit detail,” Dean told her, glad the attention had shifted from him.

“I apologized for that!”

“I still have the mental scars, Sammy! I may have done a lot in my time, but monster-fucking is a big no-no.”

"You made out with a demon once,” Sam pointed out desperately. 

"Yeah, I made a deal to bring your sorry ass back from the dead. You're welcome by the way."

“You slept with that Amazon.”

“Didn’t know what she was at the time. And if you're trying to make me look bad, it's going to backfire. We all know how that ended.”

Dean gave his brother a pointed look, and Sam winced. He’d forgotten he wasn’t exactly the hero of that story. 

"I had sex in a church once!"

"Not helpful, Jack."

“You kissed an angel intentionally,” Cas chimed up. 

All heads turned to Cas, confused expressions on all their faces. 

Claire spoke slowly, and slightly condescendingly. “Yeah, Cas, we all know that one.”

“Oh no, not me. Anna. My sister. In front of me.”

Claire sucked her teeth and raised a judgmental eyebrow at Dean. “Wow, dude, his sister? Low blow.”

“Et tu, Brute? I've already got Sam and Claire hanging out my dirty laundry, I don't need you coming for me too. Are you still mad about that? I barely knew you then!”

“You barely knew her either, but that didn’t stop you from having intercourse with her in the backseat of your car. The same seat you have made me sit in on numerous occasions.”

The heads all shifted to Dean. 

“Okay, yes, I did do that. But that was, God, that was nearly twenty years ago. We weren’t dating at the time. Well, two can play at that game. Cas made out with a demon, too. And not for a deal.”

Cas stammered for a moment, his head flicking to everyone staring at him. “She kissed me first!”

“You did kind of kiss her back, though,” Sam reminded him. 

"Stay out of this, Sam.” Cas pointed a stern finger at him that only wobbled slightly with intoxication. 

"Well, they're happy together now. That's all in the past," Donna tried to interject to lighten the mood. 

"You'd think that, wouldn't you? But do you know what Cas has done since we’ve been together?”

“Don’t you dare, Dean, you promised you wouldn’t mention th—”

“Cas went on three dates with a woman last month.”

Cas hid his face in his hands to avoid the critical looks heading his way. 

“You are deliberately phrasing that to make me look bad. I didn’t know they were dates.”

“You went out for dinner."

"I've had dinner with everyone at this table, none of those were dates."

"Dinner and a movie, Cas. A _romantic_ movie. That’s a classic first date move.”

Eileen's eyes lit up, and she leaned forwards in anticipation. “Well, now I have to know everything.” 

Cas sighed, and realized he wasn’t getting out of this one. “I met her in the library while I was researching the Voynich Manuscript and she seemed really interested in my work, so we went out to dinner to discuss it more.”

“No woman that hot is interested in 1400s codexes. Yeah, I googled her,” he added, unashamed. “She was obviously hitting on you.”

“So, at what point did you realize these dinners were not as platonic as you thought?” Sam inquired, equally engrossed as his wife. 

“Shortly after she put her tongue in my mouth.”

A collective wince was felt around the room. 

“She played tonsil tennis with you in the middle of the restaurant?” Claire asked, somehow equally impressed and disgusted.

“No, this was in her apartment.”

“You went back to her place?!” Eileen was enjoying this so much it almost made her feel better about the time she dated a guy who turned out to have an apartment covered in My Little Pony memorabilia. 

“She invited me in for coffee,” he tried to justify. 

“Oh, Cas." She put a supportive, if condescending, hand on his wrist. "Everyone knows coffee on the third date means sex.” The ‘You poor, innocent soul,’ went unspoken, yet was heard by everyone. 

“Well, I didn’t! Someone should really write a manual. This happens way too often,” he grumbled angrily.

Dean poked him. “It wouldn’t if you just wore the tie I got you.”

"And that's just Cas,” Sam interrupted. “Together they’re worse. Do you want to hear about last Saturday?”

“Yes!”

“No!” Claire and Jody yelled at the same time. 

“Oh, that one’s on you, Sammy. If I don’t answer when you phone me ten times, assume I’m otherwise occupied.”

“Alright, yes, I did phone you ten times while you were having sex, but that doesn’t mean you had to answer!”

“Ten times in five minutes, dude. I thought something had happened to you.”

“Oh, so you thought I was dying, and you didn’t stop having sex?” Sam scoffed. 

“We did! At first. But when we realized you just wanted us to babysit, we kind of… carried on. Look, it had been a while, okay? Cas has been busy writing his paper, I've been working on the diner expansion. It was the first free evening we’d had in weeks, so yeah, we were going to use it! What was so important that made you phone me that much anyway? You never explained.”

“My firm had taken on a really important case. The Logan Reynolds case? Heard about it?”

How could he not? It was the case of the decade, the only thing on the news at the moment. They had CCTV footage of the guy murdering a homeless man in broad daylight in Chicago while one hundred witnesses swore blind he was giving a benefit for recovering drug addicts in LA at the exact same time. No one could explain it. 

“It could make or break my career,” Sam continued. “Eileen was out with Valerie, and Val had already canceled three times so this was the first time they’d seen each other in six months, and our usual babysitter needs at least two days warning, so yeah, I phoned you. I wasn’t exactly expecting to phone a sex line. You said you two have toned it down.”

“Exactly. Toned it down, not stopped. We’re not old grandpas just yet. Is that the best you’ve got, Sammy? ‘Cause I’ve got stories about you for days. Do you guys want to hear what Sam got up to with a watermelon at Stanford?”

“No!”

“Yes!” Claire reveled in the destruction she had caused.

“So one day, he’s off to the store to buy this watermelon, right? And he bumps into this nun—”

“Alright, that’s enough!” Jody cut him off in her most commanding mom-voice, which caused the whole room to fall silent. “All of you. I thought we were all supposed to be adults here?”

“I’m nearly nine!” Jack announced proudly. 

“Don’t remind me.”

Jody gave Dean a strict eye and he mimed zipping his lips together. “We’ve had a little bit too much to drink, so let’s all go to bed and sleep it off, huh? I expect to hear some apologies in the morning.”

“Sorry, Jody,” Cas mumbled, putting down his first and only glass of wine, still half full, “we’ve ruined a lovely evening, haven’t we?”

Donna wrapped an overly supportive arm around his shoulders and squeezed so tight he thought something was going to break. “What’s a family dinner without drama, eh?”

“I told you, Cas. That teenybopper ruins everything,” Dean snarked, forgetting his self-imposed silence.

Claire flipped him off over Jody’s shoulder so she couldn’t see and smiled smugly. She knew Dean couldn’t return the favor from his angle without getting into trouble. 

They slowly started winding down for the evening, everyone heading to their respective beds. Dean managed to not complain about Claire and Kaia getting to share the queen bed in the guest room and him and Cas being stuck on the lumpy couches. Jack flew back to his student apartment for the night, once again using the excuse of no room, but he was obviously avoiding the busted-up old camp bed Jody had put out for him.

"I'm sorry, Cas," Dean muttered groggily once the sounds of everyone getting ready for bed had turned to deep breathing. "I was bringing up old shit. Do you forgive me?" 

Cas was silent for a second and Dean couldn't see his face in the darkness to read his emotion. "That depends. Do you promise never to flirt with the barista at Starbucks anymore?"

"What? I don't flirt with her! I'm just being nice!"

"Well, she seems to think you're flirting. She gave you her number the last time we went."

"No, she didn't!"

"She did, I just threw out the receipt before you saw."

Dean laughed sleepily. "Okay. I promise to be horrible to every barista, waitress, and any other minimum wage employee I ever meet again. Happy?"

"Very."

"Good. Now go to bed, Cas."

He didn't need telling twice. He was out like a light within ten seconds, Dean following a minute later.

***

“Is that him? I can’t tell. They all look the same in these stupid hats.”

“They’re only just calling out the Ds, Dean. It will be a while before Jack’s turn.”

“I’ll have you calling out for the D later, babe.”

Sam leaned around Eileen to shush them. Dean winked cockily at Cas and mouthed ‘Later.’

Several more minutes passed in silence, with Dean growing increasingly bored and jiggling his leg up and down until Jack’s name was finally called. Dean immediately leaped to his feet and started cheering, whooping and whistling, making as much noise as possible in the otherwise subdued audience. Harry stood up on his chair and joined in, jumping and waving his arms. Eileen sat him back down again, whispering apologies to the nearby parents, but he still managed one more wave to the stage. 

Cas wished the ground would swallow him up so no one would have to know he was ever even acquaintances with them. “Dean, sit down. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

On stage, Jack shook hands with an old man with a white beard whose name had been announced at the beginning of the speeches, but Dean was too busy napping to remember, and collected a stiff envelope containing his diploma and walked off stage in a hurry, side-eyeing Dean in the audience. 

“No, I’m embarrassing _him._ It is my right, as a parent, to be as embarrassing as possible in front of all of his friends.”

One of the gown-clad graduates at the side of the stage playfully punched Jack in the shoulder and pointed into the audience. He cracked what must have been a hilarious joke because several other students joined in with the laughter. Jack pulled his cap further over his face. 

After several more insufferably boring minutes as the rest of the student body collected their diplomas had passed and everyone had thrown their hats in the air to raucous applause, they were finally allowed out of their seats to congratulate Jack. 

Dean barrelled his way past the other parents and made it to him first. He punched Jack in the same spot, causing him to wince slightly.

“Nice work, kid. Knew you had it in you. The first one in the family to go to college,” he congratulated, with a painful pinch to Jack’s cheek.

The others had finally made their way over a few moments later, having not elbowed any jubilant parents. “Hey, I went to college,” Sam pouted. 

“You’re so smart. You get that from me, you know.” Dean lightly tugged the tassel on Jack’s cap. 

“You’re not related.”

Dean ignored all of his brother's interjections and tweaked the end of Jack’s nose. 

“Can I see?” Cas asked, extending a hand towards Jack. 

He took the envelope from Jack’s hands and carefully opened it to read:

Jack Kline  
has satisfactorily pursued the studies and passed the examinations required to earn the degree of   
Bachelor of Science  
in   
Anthropology

  
Cas handed it back then pulled Jack in by the shoulders for a sideways hug which knocked the cap off his head and kissed him on the top of his hair. 

“I’m so proud of you.”

Dean wrapped his arms around him from the other side and kissed him too. 

“All jokes aside, me too, kid,” he murmured into Jack’s hair. 

“Guys, stop it,” Jack light-heartedly protested. 

“Never,” Cas said, squeezing him tighter and kissing his temple again. 

“Hey, we’re proud, too. Make room.”

Sam and Eileen joined the hug and smothered Jack in even more kisses, across his forehead, cheeks, the tip of his nose. Harry managed to find a space at Jack’s waist to wrap his arms around. 

A laugh interrupted them. Jack managed to extract himself from the octopus-like creature attacking him and greeted the friend they’d seen joke with him earlier. Jack blushed and took a few steps away from his family. 

“See? Embarrassing your kids is fun,” Dean whispered to Cas. 

The guy who laughed had large, rippling muscles, visible even under his ill-fitting gown, and was holding hands with an identically dressed girl with elaborately styled curly dark brown hair. 

“You going to introduce us?” Dean asked after a few seconds of silence. 

“Oh, right. This is Zehra, she was in a few of the same classes as me in my first year, and this is her boyfriend, Chad. He’s in Phi Kappa Psi with me.”

Dean just about managed to contain a very manly squeal and turned back to whisper excitedly into Cas’s ear. “Oh my God, his name is actually Chad. This is the best day of my life!” 

With Jack’s superior hearing, he heard every word but had no idea what Dean was talking about so just carried on as if he was never interrupted. “These are my dads, Dean and Cas, my aunt and uncle, Eileen and Sam, and my cousin, Harry,” he finished, in keeping with their public cover story. 

They all waved their hands in greeting. Expecting mumbled hellos in response, they were startled when Zehra yelped and nearly dropped her diploma. 

“Oh my God, Casper Kline!”

Sam looked around, expecting to find some celebrity standing behind him, before remembering that was Cas’s fake name. Everyone turned their heads to stare at Cas, bewildered.

Cas tilted his head and squinted at the girl, trying to recognize her. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“Oh, no, we’ve never met, but I’m a huge fan! I drove all the way out to Phoenix to listen to your TED talk on Neolithic cave drawings. It was amazing!”

Dean had listened to Cas rehearse that speech for weeks. It was boring as hell. 

“So you know Cas?” Sam prompted.

“Well,” she scoffed, “does anyone really know Casper Kline?”

Eileen shot Dean a sideways glance for an explanation, and he gave a small shrug in response. Sensing their confusion, Zehra continued. 

“He just popped out of thin air a few years ago! He's never studied at any of the major linguistics departments in any university, never apprenticed under any of the greats. Out of nowhere, a children’s book translator solves one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of all time and he’s suddenly everywhere! Everyone is talking about him!”

Dean slowly turned to face Cas and clapped a hand to his shoulder with a slow, dumbfounded blink.

“You didn’t tell me you were famous.”

Cas felt blood rush to his face. “I am fairly well regarded in certain linguistics circles.”

He hunched his shoulders, the weight of everyone’s gaze causing him to collapse in on himself. 

“ _‘Fairly well regarded._ ’” Zehra mimicked. “He’s so modest. The guy is a savant. He’s revolutionized the field. What must it be like for you, to be in his presence every day?”

Sam stammered, struggling to find the best words to appease this young girl with pure admiration on her face. “Uh, Cas has always been like this, so we’re just… used to it.” And failing. 

Dean laughed. “Yeah, I just think it’s sexy when he talks to me in Spanish.”

He had had an absolutely spectacular orgasm once with Cas whispering what he thought was unimaginably filthy things in his ear. Cas had later informed him he had just told Dean it was his turn to do the dishes. 

That earned him an elbow in the ribs from Cas, but luckily it seemed nothing was going to stop Zehra’s compliments. 

“He’s inspired me so much. I already knew I loved languages from when I learned English growing up, but his work made me really consider translation as a career. I even changed my major because of him. I’ve read all his papers.” She gasped. “I think I have his paper on the Voynich Manuscript in my bag. Would you sign it for me?”

“Uh, sure.”

She squealed again and ran off, pulling Chad by the hand, causing him to stumble slightly before getting his footing and following her. 

They all stared in disbelieving silence at Cas for a few moments. No one noticed Harry get bored and walk off to follow a snail making its way up the path. 

Dean was the first to find his words. 

“Cas, what the hell was that?”

“It appears my work has reached a larger audience than I realized,” he mumbled, his eyes tracing the path Zehra had just taken. 

“Dude, you have a groupie!”

“Who just carries scientific papers around with them? At their graduation?” Sam wondered aloud.   
  
Zehra returned moments later, this time without Chad. Dean could see him talking to a middle-aged couple who must be his parents a few yards away. Cas tentatively took the pen she offered him and signed the same no-frills C. Kline Dean had seen him sign on all of his mortgage papers, but she seemed over the moon with it, clutching it to her chest with more reverence than she’d given her diploma. 

She regarded Jack’s face intensely, like she was mentally reviewing their last four years of friendship. “I can’t believe I never knew you were Casper Kline’s son! I mean, same last name, same face. It’s so obvious!”

“See! Told you you were identical,” Dean announced, vindicated. 

Jack had long since tired of this argument so didn’t even bother to entertain it. He turned to Zehra. “We’re about to go out to Wahlburgers, do you want to come?

“Uhh, Jack, I’m sure she had her own family to celebrate with.”

“Oh, they couldn’t make it out here. I’m going home to visit them in a few days, though,” she eagerly informed them. 

“Don’t you want to celebrate with Chad?” he tried again. 

She considered it for a moment. “Hmm. Nah. We pretty much agreed we were going to break up after college, anyway. We’ve got different career paths ahead of us. He wants to join the Cleveland Browns,” she finished with a small grimace. 

“Okay, then. I’ll call the restaurant, tell them to add one more to the reservation.” He found the number in his history and dialed it. “Dinner with the Belieber, why not? My life’s already so goddamn weird,” he said to himself. 

“Let’s go, then!” Jack said cheerfully to everyone. He looked around for a moment and found Harry a few yards away, now letting the snail crawl across his cheek. He whined when Jack placed the snail back in the dirt and wiped his sleeve across the trail on his face. 

“Aww, can’t I keep him, Uncle Jack?”

“Sorry, buddy, no pets allowed in the restaurant. But I’ll send you as many snails as you want once you’re back home.”

Sam grimaced. With Jack’s powers, any kind of giant snail could turn up on his doorstep. 

Zehra turned back to her boyfriend. “Bye Chad!” she yelled across the courtyard. 

He looked away from the bubbly woman in front of him. “Oh, uh, bye! See you around?”

“Nope!”

“Okay!” he replied, and turned back to his parents, unfazed. 

Cas watched the exchange in confusion and whispered to Dean from the corner of his mouth, “I will never understand the youth of today.”

Dean slung his arm over Cas’s shoulders and followed Jack and Zehra towards the parking lot, overhearing their very animated conversation about the latest TikTok dance trend. “Me neither, babe.”

***

Cas had barely walked over the threshold when he felt strong hands grab him by the shoulders and push him back into the front door, shutting it behind him. 

He didn’t have a second to register what was happening before Dean closed the already small gap between them and kissed him until he was breathless. 

A minute or an eternity later Dean pulled back slightly, chuckling lightly when Cas tried to chase after his lips. 

“Good evening,” Dean smiled, indulging Cas with one last kiss. 

“Um, not that I’m complaining, but what was that all about?”

It wasn’t their anniversary, Dean’s birthday, or his own fake one. It had been an ordinary day at work that he was expecting to be followed by an ordinary evening, curled up on the couch watching whatever trash show Dean was into at the moment. He never paid attention. 

“I’ve been thinking, Cas.” Dean’s voice had a slight wobble to it that he was doing his best to cover, but Cas knew him well enough to recognize it. 

“About what?”

“About what’s next. For us, I mean. Look at what everyone else is up to. Jack’s graduated and is off traveling the world. Sam’s a super hotshot lawyer thanks to that Reynolds case, Eileen's pregnant again, Harry’s just started school, Claire and Kaia have finally got their heads out of their asses and are now even more insufferable than we were when we first got together. But what about us? Don't we all deserve to be happy?”

“The diner’s pie line is becoming very successful, and training Zehra as my apprentice is going very well.”

After she’d calmed down somewhat, she’d asked for Cas’s number, which he’d been reluctant to give her at first, but after realizing she wasn’t attempting to flirt with him he’d handed it over. She was a very fast learner and Cas enjoyed her company, even if she did stare in wonder every time he translated anything.

“Yeah, but that’s all boring stuff. I think it’s time for our next big adventure.”

“I’m not going back to purgatory.”

Dean laughed at his deadpan delivery. “No, not that. Come with me.”

Dean took Cas by the hand and dragged him through the house, to the back door. Upon hearing the latch, Miracle’s head perked up and he let out a small whine. He tried to get to his feet, but with his arthritic joints, it took him a few attempts. Dean let go of Cas’s hands and patted Miracle back into his bed. 

“No walkies now, buddy. Go back to sleep.”

Miracle collapsed back into his bed with a huff. Within moments, he was back to sleep. He spent most of his time asleep these days, only rising for food. Dean tucked the blanket back over his body and gave him a light scratch behind his ear. 

Dean retook Cas’s hands and opened the sliding door. Stepping through, Cas noticed for the first time the pale yellow fairy lights wrapped around the trees at the back of the clearing. 

“Dean,” Cas whispered with a small smile, “what’s all this?”

“Actions,” he said, pulling Cas up the path, passed the nicks in the trees from where Claire had used Jack as a moving target for her knife-throwing practice, passed the patch of scorched grass where Claire and Jack had tried to cook a fish from the lake, passed the now-broken homemade trap they’d made to catch what they thought was a stray cat but turned out to be a feral possum. Wow, he needed to stop letting those two be unattended in his garden. 

Cas didn’t notice all the imperfections. He was staring in wonder at the lights hugging every other tree up the path, and the soft, light pink rose petals mixed with the autumn leaves on the ground.

They reached Dean’s favorite fishing bench, which was barely recognizable, buried by an elaborate garland of flowers and vines winding around the legs. The trees behind them were filled with lanterns of all different sizes and lit with so many tea lights that it almost looked like daylight.

Dean sat Cas down on the bench next to a simple silver-topped lantern, emitting a subtle blue glow from the small glass vial within it, and took a before steps back. 

“And words,” he finished. 

He took a few deep breaths before looking back at Cas, who had his head tilted to the side in confusion but also had a hint of a smile tugging at his lips. 

“I’m not good at this, Cas. Feelings and crap. I’ve rehearsed this a thousand times and I still don’t think it’s right.

“Look, I’m a repressed asshole. You know that. My whole life, I couldn’t let myself get close to anyone because it would just hurt all the more when they died. And they did die. I’ve lost so many friends, more than I can count. And it still hurt every time. So what was the point in not loving them in the first place?

“And then I met you, and you were the best friend I ever had. Losing you hurt more than anyone else, more than words can describe. I should have realized then that that was more than losing a friend. That I felt something more for you. 

“I wish I had told you this yesterday. Last week, two years ago, a decade ago, but I guess I was too much of a fool to realize.

“I should have said this to you when we both couldn’t sleep so we made waffles in our underwear at 3 am and ended up slow dancing in the kitchen to Down By The Seaside. 

“I should have said it on the porch that day we argued, at Sam’s wedding, the day you found me hungover.

“I should have told you the first time you kissed me, the day The Empty took you, in Purgatory, the first time you were human in that motel, at the damn brothel. 

“Because it’s been that long, Cas. I didn’t know it at the time, but it has. 

“I love you, Cas. I love you. I will always love you. From now until my final day, and then for all of eternity in heaven.”

Dean got to his knees in front of his boyfriend. Cas’s eyes had been welling up since the beginning, but the sound of those three words he’d been longing to hear for so long had tears falling down his cheeks. 

Dean took something small out of his jeans pockets. He held the black meteorite and sterling silver ring up to Cas. 

“Will you marry me?”

Cas didn’t answer right away. He was smiling, wider than Dean had ever seen, despite the tears. It was a look he had seen on Cas’s face before, a long time ago, but it was so different this time. This wasn’t an ending; it was a beginning. 

“Yes,” he whispered, his voice breaking. He fell forwards from the bench and joined Dean on the ground, not caring that he was muddying his good work slacks, and buried his face in Dean's neck.

Dean placed small kisses up the side of his neck until he pulled away and let Dean work the ring onto his finger.

"You know this means you're stuck with me now? No returning me to the store when I don't put my socks in the hamper."

Cas surged forward to press their lips together. He tried to pour as much emotion, every second of the last eighteen years that he'd been in love, into it.

"I'm never letting you go. Ever. I love you."

"Oh, thank God. This would be really awkward if you didn't feel the same way."

Dean chuckled when Cas playfully shoved his chest, then got to his feet and extended a hand to his fiancé. "So. Off to the rest of our lives, then?"

Cas took his hand. "The rest of our lives."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief mention of past ambiguously underge sex

**Author's Note:**

> Well that took much longer to write than I thought it would! Let me know what think :)


End file.
